Giuliana Perrone is Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Introduction: an abolitionist vision; 1. The contract controversy; 2. 'Wreck and ruin'; 3. 'By force it was destroyed'; 4. Confederate reckonings; 5. Life after the death of slavery; 6. 'Back into the days of slavery'; 7. 'The grave question'; 8. Final failure; Epilogue: an abolitionist revision.

Based on author's thesis (doctoral - University of California, Berkeley, 2015) issued under title: Litigating emancipation: slavery's legal afterlife, 1865-1877.