“Slave” and “free” were far from the only categories that nineteenth-century African Americans could occupy. Scholars have volunteered a number of concepts to help make sense of these various categories, including “unfreedom,” “liminality,” “informal freedom,” and “term slavery.” The papers on this panel are in conversation with historians who have directed their attention toward the study of people whose statuses remained in-between. Through her analysis of family reunification efforts in Liberia, Marie Stango lays bare the fundamental inadequacy of freedom in an age when millions of children, parents, and other relatives remained in bondage and countries apart. Julia Bernier examines individuals who retroactively purchased their freedom after having successfully taken refuge from their owners, demonstrating the limitations of theories of “self-emancipation” that fail to contend with legal realities. Cory Young’s exploration of “last slave” obituaries shows how Pennsylvanians transformed the death of an aging enslaved population into proof of their commitment to free soil ideology.

This panel focuses scholarly attention on the legacies of slavery in the northern United States and in Liberia at a moment when many abolitionists were shifting their attention to the South. Together, these papers examine the tangible ways that the fundamental markers of enslavement persisted in areas where gradual emancipation had existed for decades. Antebellum Black freedom struggles rarely culminated in singular victories, but rather were ongoing processes that offered glimpses of hope before continuing to unfold.