Enslavement and the Appellate Courts: A Dataset of Northern and Free State Legal Decisions from 1784 to 1875

This dataset contains a list of published cases involving enslaved people decided in northern and free state courts from 1784 to 1875. The dataset contains 287 cases and reveals the extensive involvement of northern and free state courts in slavery. It includes the names of the enslaved people involved in the dispute, the legal subject matter of the opinions, the courts where the cases were decided, and the number of times that the cases have been cited by later courts.