A microcosm of the history of American slavery in a collection of the most important primary and secondary readings on slavery at Georgetown University and among the Maryland Jesuits

These essays, articles, and documents introduce readers to the history of Georgetown University’s involvement in slavery and recent efforts to confront its troubling past. It traces Georgetown’s “Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation Initiative” and the role of universities–uniquely situated to conduct that reckoning through research, teaching, and modeling thoughtful discussion–in this movement.

Born into slavery in rural Louisiana, Rose Herera was bought and sold several times before being purchased by the De Hart family of New Orleans. Still a slave, she married and had children, who also became the property of the De Harts. But after Union forces captured New Orleans in 1862 during the American Civil War, Herera’s owners fled to Havana, taking three of her small children with them. Beyond Freedom’s Reach is the true story of one woman’s quest to rescue her children from bondage. In a gripping, meticulously researched account, Adam Rothman lays bare the mayhem of emancipation during and after the Civil War. Just how far the rights of freed slaves extended was unclear to black and white people alike, and so when Mary De Hart returned to New Orleans in 1865 to visit friends, she was surprised to find herself taken into custody as a kidnapper. The case of Rose Herera’s abducted children made its way through New Orleans’ courts, igniting a custody battle that revealed the prospects and limits of justice during Reconstruction. Rose Herera’s perseverance brought her children’s plight to the attention of members of the U.S. Senate and State Department, who turned a domestic conflict into an international scandal. Beyond Freedom’s Reach is an unforgettable human drama and a poignant reflection on the tangled politics of slavery and the hazards faced by so many Americans on the hard road to freedom.

Rothman explores how slavery flourished in a new nation dedicated to the principle of equality among free men, and reveals the enormous consequences of U.S. expansion into the region that became the Deep South.

A true story of six generations of an African American family in Maryland. Based on paintings, photographs, books, diaries, court records, legal documents, and oral histories, the book traces Yarrow Mamout and his in-laws, the Turners, from the colonial period through the Civil War to Harvard and finally the present day.

From the colonial period through the early nineteenth century, Father Thomas J. Murphy writes a compelling chronology and in depth analysis of Jesuit slaveholding in the state of Maryland.

"Sets Georgetown's story within the larger educational context quite expertly."-Catholic Historical Review.

Slavery existed in North America long before the first Africans arrived at Jamestown in 1619. For centuries, from the pre-Columbian era through the 1840s, Native Americans took prisoners of war and killed, adopted, or enslaved them. Christina Snyder's pathbreaking book takes a familiar setting for bondage, the American South, and places Native Americans at the center of her engrossing story. Indian warriors captured a wide range of enemies, including Africans, Europeans, and other Indians. Yet until the late eighteenth century, age and gender more than race affected the fate of captives. As economic and political crises mounted, however, Indians began to racialize slavery and target African Americans. Native people struggling to secure a separate space for themselves in America developed a shared language of race with white settlers. Although the Indians' captivity practices remained fluid long after their neighbors hardened racial lines, the Second Seminole War ultimately tore apart the inclusive communities that Native people had created through centuries of captivity. Snyder's rich and sweeping history of Indian slavery connects figures like Andrew Jackson and Cherokee chief Dragging Canoe with little-known captives like Antonia Bonnelli, a white teenager from Spanish Florida, and David George, a black runaway from Virginia. Placing the experiences of these individuals within a complex system of captivity and Indians' relations with other peoples, Snyder demonstrates the profound role of Native American history in the American past.

This Book, Georgetown University, is a revised edition by alumni Paul ONeill (C'86) and Bennie Smith (C'86). The book includes 200 images from Georgetown University's archives along with captions that tell the story of the university's first 200 years. Georgetown University, the oldest Catholic university in America, was founded in 1789 by Archbishop John Carroll, SJ, as an academy for boys that was open to Students of Every Religious Profession and every Class of Citizens. Carroll established the school on a hilltop overlooking the Potomac River, delightfully situated as Charles Dickens would observe several decades later. Georgetown welcomed its first student, William Gaston, in 1791 and was chartered by Congress in 1815, but by the time of the Civil War, when Federal troops occupied the campus, the school was on the brink of collapse. It was not until the presidency of Patrick F. Healy, SJ, in 1873 that Georgetown would recover and be set on a course to become a university, linking Georgetown College with professional schools of medicine and law. The early 20th century was marked by the founding of the schools of dentistry, nursing, foreign service, languages and linguistics, and business. Now among the top universities in America, Georgetown is continuously reinvigorated by teaching and scholarship dedicated to serving the nation and the world.