Sue Peabody’s essay, “Political and Legal Histories,” has just been published in Writing the History of Slavery, edited by David Doddington & Enrico Dal Lago, Bloomsbury “Writing History” Series (London, New York, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2022), 153-170. One of 19 historiographical chapters addressing different approaches to writing the history of slavery for students, this essay includes sections on “the political state as a frame,” “slavery and the law in the United States,” “comparative histories of slavery and abolition,” and “autobiography, biography, and microhistory.”