The Timing of Queen v. Hepburn: An exploration of African American Networks in the Early Republic

On January 8, 1810, Francis Scott Key was going to file some of the first petitions for freedom he had ever handled, one for Mina Queen and her daughter Louisa against the slaveholder John Hepburn, a second for Priscilla Queen against a Jesuit priest and slaveholder named Francis Neale, and a third for Hester Queen against slaveholders James Nevitt and Richard Nally.

The Queen v. Hepburn case would eventually go to the U. S. Supreme Court in 1813, and Chief Justice John Marshall's majority opinion would establish the "hearsay" rule in American jurisprudence. The decision was momentous because it rendered enslaved petitioners categorically as property before the law. And the 1813 decision meant that petitioners for freedom could not use hearsay testimony about the status of their ancestors. One door to freedom was closed decisively.

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Working toward freedom therefore necessarily involved many collaborators. At the least, an enslaved person needed an attorney to file a petition for freedom. We now know more about these cases, and in the last decade, historians have uncovered thousands of freedom suits in local courts before the Civil War. These cases featured complex networks of families, friends, associates, attorneys, and slaveholders. Legal actions created documentary records that linked generations across time, enfolding their histories into resources of resistance. They cannot be understood in isolation or as singular legal decisions. Instead, as in the case of Queen v. Hepburn, Priscilla and Mina Queen brought their petitions for freedom to the D.C. Circuit Court at a particular moment in time, not only summoning the defendant slaveholders to appear in court but also enlivening the historical, material, and familial networks maintained across three generations.