A new database of lawsuits by enslaved people seeking their freedom promises new insights into enslavement and the quest for freedom. Researchers at the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln have constructed a database containing more than 500 cases from the 1820s and 1830s. The cases were brought to the Circuit Court of Washington, DC, Maryland state courts, and to the Supreme Court. Records reveal that the institution of slavery was contested from its...