“An Act of Congress: Freedom Suits and the Emancipatory Consequences of the Northwest Ordinance (1790 – 1850)"
Duangkamol Tantirungkij is a Ph.D. candidate in History at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Her dissertation, “An Act of Congress: Freedom Suits and the Emancipatory Consequences of the Northwest Ordinance (1790 – 1850),” examines how enslaved people encountered and engaged with the common law judicial system in Great Lakes region. In 1789, the First Federal Congress re-enacted the Northwest Ordinance, a Confederation-era legislation, thus incorporating the Northwest Territory into the newly established federal system. The Northwest Ordinance offered prospective settlers the opportunity to organize new state governments on the condition that these settlers abide by the prohibition of slavery in the Northwest Territory. Therefore, this dissertation investigates how historical actors on the ground responded and adapted to the federal ban on slavery by analyzing legal and administrative records from settlements such as Cincinnati, Vincennes, Cahokia, and Kaskaskia. Overall, this dissertation contextualizes individual acts of resistance by enslaved litigants in the broader transformation of the Old Northwest from federal territories to states during the early national period.
Read more about Duangkamol Tantirungkij on her Fellow Profile page.