This book project tells the story of “legal Reconstruction.” Legal Reconstruction was the process by which American judges and litigants – both black and white – litigated the meaning and implications of black freedom. Using a database of nearly 700 post-emancipation slave cases, it explores the legal questions raised by emancipation, explains why they emerged, and argues that their resolutions were critical to the reconstruction of American society and law. How would the law treat former slaves? Who should bear the financial cost of emancipation? Perhaps most fundamental of all, how would litigation shape the meaning of citizenship in a nation without slavery?