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Sweet taste of liberty : a true story of slavery and restitution in America / W. Caleb McDaniel.

by McDaniel, W. Caleb (William Caleb), 1979- author.

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New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019]

Wood, Henrietta, approximately 1818-1912.

Wood, Henrietta, approximately 1818-1912 -- Trials, litigation, etc.

Enslaved persons -- Kentucky -- Biography.

Enslaved women -- Kentucky -- Biography.

Freed persons -- Ohio -- Cincinnati -- Biography.

Trials (Kidnapping) -- Ohio -- Cincinnati.

African Americans -- Reparations -- History -- 19th century.

9780190846992 (hardcover ; alkaline paper) :

0190846992 (hardcover ; alkaline paper) :

viii, 340 pages, 12 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Part I. The worst slave of them all -- The crossing -- Touseytown -- Down river -- Ward's return -- Cincinnati -- The plan -- The flight -- Part II. Forks of the road -- Raising a muss -- Wood versus Ward -- The keeper -- Natchez -- Brandon Hall -- Versailles -- Revolution -- The march -- Part III. The return of Henrietta Wood -- Arthur -- Robertson County -- Dawn and doom -- Nashville -- A rather interesting case -- Story of a slave -- The verdict.

"In Sweet Taste of Liberty, W. Caleb McDaniel focuses on the experience of a freed slave who was sold back into slavery, eventually freed again, and who then sued the man who had sold her back into bondage. Henrietta Wood was born into slavery, but in 1848, she was taken to Cincinnati and legally freed. In 1855, however, a wealthy Kentucky businessman named Zebulon Ward, who colluded with Wood's employer, abducted Wood and sold her back into bondage. In the years that followed before and during the Civil War, she gave birth to a son and was forced to march to Texas. She obtained her freedom a second time after the war and returned to Cincinnati, where she sued Ward for $20,000 in damages--now known as reparations. Astonishingly, after ten years of litigation, Henrietta Wood won her case. In 1878, a Federal jury awarded her $2,500 and the decision stuck on appeal. While nowhere close to the amount she had demanded, this may be the largest amount of money ever awarded by an American court in restitution for slavery. Wood went on to live until 1912"--

Pulitzer Prize, History, 2020.

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