Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America by W. Caleb McDaniel published by Oxford University Press (2019).
Here is the “summer read” for the Summer of Our Discontent. Caleb McDaniel’s Sweet Taste of Liberty, winner of this year’s Pulitzer Prize, is a compellingly written account of an enslaved woman who never gives up on the idea of living in freedom. Henrietta Wood was a Border State slave who was taken by her “mistress” into Ohio and set free in exchange for years of labor. She was kidnapped back into slavery, but fought her illegal abduction in the courts. Although she lost in the all-white justice system, Her case left a written record of her claim to freedom that was useful both in a subsequent lawsuit and to later historians.
Henrietta Wood was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation and the movements of the Union Army, but her “master” Gerard Brandon tried to delay her freedom for as long as possible. Like many enslaved people, Henrietta was moved by her “master” away from her home to keep her from being liberated by the Federals. Brandon took her to Texas so she would not enjoy the “sweet taste of liberty” again. He kept his slaves enslaved for months after the Civil War ended, nearly three full years after the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery in the Confederacy.
Almost no former slaves were ever compensated for their years of labor while they were illegally held in bondage. Henrietta, was an exception. She sued the man who had kidnapped her and taken her South to sell as a slave, and she won. The money she was awarded may have been used to send her son to law school.
The author makes good use of the records of her two court cases to bring Henrietta to life on the pages of this excellent book. Caleb McDaniel takes us through the life of a slave and her sale from owner to owner. He explores the precarious status of a free Black in state hostile to all African Americans. We meet slave traders who profited from kidnapping, as well as abolitionists willing to earn the hatred of the white community by standing up for their beliefs. We meet the lawyers who brought freedom suits and the journalist who thought a former slave’s story was worth recording.
Last month Sweet Taste of Liberty was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Read it and you will understand why.
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