In telling the life of Harriet, Dred's wife and co-litigant in the case, this book provides a compensatory history to the generations of work that missed key sources only recently brought to light. Moreover, it gives insight into the reasons and ways that slaves used the courts to establish their freedom. --from publisher description

• 1: Wife of a Celebrity


• 2: 1835: Arriving on the Frontier


• 3: Settling In


• 4: Entertaining Guests at the Indian Agency


• 5: Late Summer Harvest


• 6: Wintering Over at St. Peter's Agency


• 7: Winters Deep


• 8: The Change of the Guard


• 9: Celestial Explorers


• 10: The Call of the Wood as a Prelude to Treaty


• 11: A Treaty Made before Her Eyes


• 12: The Master Departs, Together Alone


• 13: Traveling the Length of the River


• 14: New Baby in a New Land


• 15: The Deteriorating Community


• 16: Battles and Baptisms


• 17: Taliaferro's Last Stand


• 18: Leaving Minnesota Trying Courts: The Justice of Frontier Trials


• 19: While the Doctor was Away: St. Louis, 1840-43


• 20: The House of Chouteau


• 21: Black Social Life of St. Louis


• 22: The Doctor Returns


• 23: 1843 Interlude: Jeff Barracks between Wars of National Expansion


• 24: Harriet and Her Children in St. Louis


• 25: The Courthouse and the Jail


• 26: Other Matters at the Courthouse


• 27: Filing Suit Again


• 28: Trial by Pestilence, Trial by Fire


• 29: Declared Free


• 30: Missouri Changes its Course


• 31: Before the High Court

Lea VanderVelde is Josephine Witte Professor of Law at the University of Iowa. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa.