Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

W. Caleb McDaniel of Rice University uncovered the story of Henrietta Wood, a woman born into slavery, freed, and re-enslaved. He sets her narrative in its nineteenth century context to expose the exploitation she endured as altogether widespread and common. The moving story of Wood’s years in slavery, while shocking, is not extraordinary. However, the post-Civil War restitution she won is unprecedented. 

Henrietta Wood was born a slave in Kentucky, sold twice, and taken by her owner to New Orleans. When her owner came upon hard times, she wound up working for his wife in Cincinnati, Ohio, where, in 1848, she was declared legally free. In Cincinnati, Henrietta enjoyed the “sweet taste of liberty” until 1853. Then, her employer offered her a carriage ride into Kentucky. There, Zebulon Ward, a Kentucky deputy sheriff, arranged for a slave trader to take her to Natchez, where she was sold to a wealthy planter for whom she labored on a cotton plantation in Mississippi and, during the Civil War, in Texas. Wood did not forget Zebulon Ward. 

In 1869, she returned to Cincinnati, a citizen, thanks to the Fourteenth Amendment; in 1870, she filed a lawsuit in federal court against Ward for damages and lost wages in the amount of $20,000. At last, in 1878, she won her suit. The court ordered Ward to pay Wood $2,500. He paid that sum. It was not nearly the amount that Harriet had sought, but it was the largest sum ever awarded by a United States court in restitution for slavery. And a sufficient sum for Wood to take to Chicago to purchase a home. The equity in this real estate enabled Wood’s only child, Arthur, to invest in an education, conduct a successful law practice, and raise a family. 

Wood’s legal victory and McDaniel’s biography were possible because she told her story at opportune times. She told it in the course of her abduction. She told it to the lawyers who handled her post-Civil War suit. She told it to journalists for two newspapers in 1876 and 1879. Thus, Henrietta Wood left a record for W. Caleb McDaniel to fill in. In his book’s last chapter, “Verdict” and the “Epilogue” McDaniel takes us to the Chicago office of the National Archives and Records Administration where the previously misfiled case file revealed Henrietta Wood’s signature – an “X” on the pleadings – and documentation that Ward had paid the judgment in full – a receipt with the case name and number bearing the inscription “Satisfaction.”