Almost a decade after the Haitian Revolution led to the abolition of slavery in the French colony of Saint-Domingue, Napoleon Bonaparte sent an expeditionary force to try to crush the Revolution and reverse emancipation. Though he failed on both counts, the destruction his assault unleashed turned thousands into refugees. Among those who fled in 1803 were a man born in southern France named Pierre Bazy, an African-born woman named Gertrude, and Gertrude’s child named Rose.

Upon arrival in Cuba and later in Louisiana, Pierre claimed to own Rose, and thus to control her labor, her behavior, and access to her body. Rose nonetheless found ways to live according to her own contrary claim to free status, and to document that freedom. Enraged, Pierre reported her to the New Orleans police as marronne (a runaway from slavery), leading to her arrest and jailing. Soon judges, lawyers, and dozens of witnesses had to address in court variants of the question: What is evidence of ownership, and what is evidence of freedom? Or, as we might put it: What could keep the legal fiction of property in a person afloat, and what might sink it?

This event presented by the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. It is made possible in part by a generous contribution from Kenneth and Frances Aftel Eisenberg.