Lanier’s team used replevin, a slave-capture law, to claim the daguerreotypes.

Evidence

Mike was excited for the opportunity to share the full story of how intertwined the North and South were during this time when Agassiz commissioned the daguerreotypes. He was also thrilled to use replevin, a law that was created in the 1800s to return fugitive slaves to their owners, to our advantage. The law argues that property must be returned to its rightful owner, and in this case, Mike argued, I was more a rightful owner of the artifacts than Harvard. He was excited because it was a law created out of the Fugitive Slave Act, which white slaveholders used to recover their slave property. As descendants, we were embracing replevin to recover the property of our enslaved ancestors. — Tamara Lanier, From These Roots, 827

Categorization

• XREF: Replevin as descendant property-recovery tool connects directly to the reader’s core interest in property law as the afterlife of slavery.
• DEFINE: Defines replevin — an ancient common-law action to recover personal property.
• SEED: The irony of descendants wielding a Fugitive Slave Act tool against Harvard is a natural essay frame for the whole reparations-via-property-law thesis.