Parts 5 and 6 shift to the “middle period” of freedom suits, when St. Louis became one of the busiest places in the country for enslaved people to sue for their freedom. Judge Stephen Sfekas explains why Missouri’s geography mattered, a slave state bordered by free states and territories, with the Mississippi River as a literal line between bondage and freedom. He traces how the cotton gin and the expansion of cotton and sugar in the Deep South drove a massive internal slave trade, and why crossing into Illinois for work at lead and salt works created repeated opportunities for freedom claims based on “sojourning” in free territory.

The episode also breaks down how these cases worked in court, including the common-law framework (trespass “with force and arms”), the defense’s claim of lawful restraint, and the frequent pursuit of money damag ...