"Somerset v Steuart @ 250: Facts, Interpretations, and Legacies" Conference
1-2 December 2022
In recent years, the Somerset v. Steuart trial of 1772 has emerged as an event of much discussion in the history of transatlantic antislavery. Scholars have debated the decision’s importance and centrality to the emancipatory impulses in the British Atlantic, and, more recently, its role in the outbreak of the American Revolution. Some have argued that Lord Mansfield’s decision in James Somerset’s favor was a central, even epochal event, while others maintain that North Americans scarcely noticed the decision. With the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the trial upon us, the David Center is convening a scholarly symposium to continue this conversation and offer fresh appraisals of the causes, nature, and consequences of the decision.
All sessions will convene both via Zoom and in person at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania (3355 Woodland Walk, Philadelphia, PA).
The conference will be held both in-person and by Zoom. Masks are optional for participants attending in-person.
Please email mceas@sas.upenn.edu for the Zoom link for the conference.
Thursday, December 1
8:30-9:00 a.m.: Light breakfast
9:00–9:15 a.m.: Welcome
9:15 - 10:30 a.m.: Opening Discussion
“The Somerset Case: A Historiographical Overview"
Dana Rabin (University of Illinois)
“"Lord Mansfield and the Uses of Historical Myth: An Historiography of the Somerset Case in the 20th century"
Harvey R. Neptune (Temple University)
Discussant: Matthew Mason (Brigham Young University)
10:30-11:00 a.m.: Coffee Break
11:00 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.: Session 1: Constitutions
““The same indispensable duty operates throughout”: War, Captivity, and the ‘Domestication’ of Slavery in Somerset v. Steuart”
John Blanton (City College of New York)
"The Lawyers' Somerset"
Daniel Hulsebosch (New York University)
“"But only positive law:" Somerset and the Nature of Discretion”
Matthew Crow (Hobart and William Smith Colleges)
Discussant: Michael Meranze (University of California Los Angeles) [participating via Zoom]
12:15 - 1:00 p.m.: Lunch
1:00 - 2:00 p.m.: Session 2: Boston
“Somerset, the Bible, & the End of Hereditary Slavery in Massachusetts”
Nicholas Wood (Spring Hill College)
“Somerset’s Boston, Boston’s Somerset”
Grant Stanton (University of Pennsylvania)
Discussant: Kathleen Brown (University of Pennsylvania)
2:00 - 2:15 p.m.: Break
2:15 - 3:15 p.m.: Session 3: News
“Before Somerset: How British Slaves Shared News of Emancipation and Rebellion in the Eighteenth Century”
Justin Pope (Missouri University of Science and Technology)
“Somerset v. Steuart: Who Knew What, When, and How?”
Helena Yoo Roth (Graduate Center, CUNY)
Discussant: Asheesh Kapur Siddique (University of Massachusetts, Amherst) [participating via Zoom]
3:15-3:30 p.m.: Break
3:30 - 4:45 p.m.: Session 4: Fugitives
“Property in Mobile People: Captivity, Forced Migrations, and Enslavement in the Eighteenth Century British Empire”
Scott Heerman (University of Miami) [NOTE: unable to attend]
“From slavery to servitude to freedom: the gradual end of slavery in England in the wake of the Somerset decision”
Simon Newman (University of Wisconsin)
“Jacob Duryee, the Somerset Case, the Book of Negroes, and the British Evacuation of New York City in 1783”
Marcus Daniel (University of Hawai’i at Manoa)
Discussant: Richard Blackett (Vanderbilt University)
4:45 – 6:00 p.m.: Reception
Friday, December 2
8:30 - 9:00 a.m.: Light breakfast
9:00 - 9:15 a.m.: Welcome back
9:15 - 10:30 a.m.: Session 5: Actors/Biography
“Somerset v. Steuart as an American Case: Reconstructing James Somerset’s Colonial Networks”
Kirsten Sword (Indiana University, Bloomington)
“The 'Portrait of Dido Elizabeth Belle and Lady Elizabeth Murray' in the Wake of Somerset v. Steuart (1772)”
Jennifer Germann (Independent Scholar)
“Mansfieldism: How the Mason-Dixon Line Contributed to the Somerset Decision”
Henry Buehner (Jefferson University)
Discussant: Rachel Shelden (Penn State University)
10:30 - 10:45 a.m.: Coffee Break
10:45 - 12:00 p.m.: Session 6: Proslavery
“Somerset and the Birth of Racial Capitalism in the West Indies”
Trevor Burnard (University of Hull) [participating via Zoom]
“”Free White Persons”: Slaveholder Citizenship Politics in the Early United States”
Paddy Riley (Reed College)
““A Law Totally Different from that Which Exists in Virginia”: The Somerset Decision’s Effects on British and Virginian Abolition Debates”
Adam Thomas (Western Carolina University)
Discussant: Paul Finkelman (Gustavus Adolphus College)
12:00 - 1:00 p.m.: Lunch
1:00 p.m - 2:00 p.m.: Session 7: Antislavery
“Subjection, Protection, and Sovereignty: Another Somerset Principle in American Abolitionism”
Evan Turiano (Queens College, CUNY)
“"Somerset" by Inches: Fugitives from Slavery, Enslaved Travelers, and the Steady Accumulation of Free Soil”
Jordan Grant (American University)
Discussant: Sarah Barringer Gordon (University of Pennsylvania)
2:00 - 2:15 p.m.: Break
2:15 - 3:00 p.m. Wrap-up/Final Thoughts