Archy Lee's Struggle for Freedom: The True Story of California Gold, the Nation's Tragic March Toward Civil War, and a Young Black Man's Fight for Lib (Hardcover)
Against the backdrop of the run-up to the Civil War, a young African American man in San Francisco in 1858 was freed from the claims of a white man who sought to return him to slavery in Mississippi. Archy Lee was the name of the man who, with the aid of anti-slavery lawyers and determined opponents of human bondage, won his freedom from the claims of Charles Stovall. With the aid of pro-slavery lawyers and equally determined supporters, Stovall had sought to capture him and carry him back to a far-away slave plantation. This is the story of Archy Lee, and the fight against slavery in a non-slave state.
Brian McGinty is a writer and historian whose special interests include American history, the history of the American West, and American legal history. His previous books include Lincoln and the Court, The Body of John Merryman: Abraham Lincoln and the Suspension of Habeas Corpus, John Brown's Trial, and Lincoln's Greatest Case: The River, the Bridge, and the Making of America He lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. .