Counterfeit Justice: The Judicial Odyssey of Texas Freedwoman Azeline Hearne by Dale Baum (review)

In Counterfeit Justice, Dale Baum contributes to a growing literature of the Reconstruction era that strives to strike a balance between showing former slaves as independent historical actors and uncovering the bleak reality of Reconstruction’s unfulfilled promises. Like Susan Eva O’Donovan’s Becoming Free in the Cotton South (2007), among other works, Counterfeit Justice illustrates the fact that “freedmen and freed-women undeniably made their own history, but they did not make it under conditions chosen by themselves. Their choices were limited” (269).

Making excellent use of legal and Freedmen’s Bureau records, Baum recounts the story of Texas freedwoman Azeline Hearne, who inherited her master’s massive estate and was systematically cheated out of ever reaping its benefits. Initially, this seems like the story of a single individual’s frustrating legal struggles, but it is also the story of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction on the ground in one Texas county. Baum deftly weaves these stories together in his precise and engaging account of Hearne’s “judicial odyssey.”

At the center of the story is Azeline Hearne, who had lived with her master, Sam Hearne, and their son in a cabin on Sam’s plantation in Robertson County, Texas. When Sam died in 1866, his newly freed son, Doctor Samuel Jones Hearne, or “Dock,” inherited the entire estate with a provision that Dock care for Azeline for the rest of her life. In bequeathing his property to his ex-slave son and providing for Azeline, Sam Hearne defied the expectations of his family (a virtual cotton-growing dynasty) and the white community of Robertson County. As Baum explores the many possibilities of the parameters of the relationship between master and slave, he is careful to point out that we cannot know whether Azeline suffered abuse or whether her relationship with Sam was consensual. Given the provisions of Sam Hearne’s will, however, Baum concludes that their relationship “undeniably ended with affectionate devotion to one another” (31).

Although Sam’s family initiated legal proceedings as soon as they heard that Dock had inherited his father’s estate, the central conflicts of the story result from Azeline’s inheritance of the estate from her son. When her son died during a major yellow fever epidemic in 1868, Azeline—a former slave, an African American, a woman—became one of the wealthiest landowners in the county. She would spend the next sixteen years fighting to keep her inheritance from Sam’s family as well as from prominent members of the local white community intent on getting their hands on her fortune. The legal cases explored in the book are complex and detailed, sometimes overwhelmingly so, but Baum strives carefully to explain them to readers who are not legal scholars and to keep the pieces together by gently reminding readers about key actors and events as they become relevant again in the story’s unfolding.

Baum’s recovery of a life largely ignored by history is extraordinary, although he appears as frustrated as his readers might be that ultimately, the legal and historical record has little to tell us about Azeline’s daily experiences. Baum chooses to reveal details of her life as they emerge in the records, and so it is not until very late in the story that readers learn of her grim fate, that in spite of her wealth, she lived like a pauper and survived only on the generosity of others in her community, even before she lost her inheritance.

It is not enough to say that the events of Reconstruction provide the backdrop to the story. The rise and fall of the Freedmen’s Bureau and Republican politics in Texas, the violence of whites toward blacks, and blacks’ efforts to wield their political power at the polls are a central aspect of the story, the conditions that shape Azeline’s experiences within the legal system. In...