Shurtleff launches campaign ... for his novel

Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff already is running for the U.S. Senate. But he plans to start a new campaign Tuesday: the national launch of his new historical novel, "Am I Not a Man, the Dred Scott Story," about the famous slave who sued for freedom.

Shurtleff is trying to unseat Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, who recently launched a book himself: "Leap of Faith," which defends the Book of Mormon against allegations of forgery. Now Bennett and Shurtleff can compete for book sales as well as votes.

From 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. today at The Gateway Barnes & Noble store in Salt Lake City, Shurtleff will officially launch the sale of his book with a reading, book-signing, a visit by Scott's great-granddaughter (Lynne Johnson) and singing by the Calvary Baptist Church choir.

So why did a white man from Utah decide to tell the slave's story and delve so deeply into it that he visited all the key locations of Scott's life and studied period writing closely so he could show the accent of slaves?

"When I was a new attorney general, I was preparing some PowerPoints about different famous cases," he said. "I get lots of speaking opportunities."

So he looked again at the Scott case, which he said he studied in law school mostly because it showed that the Supreme Court could overturn a major act of Congress (the Missouri Compromise).

"It suddenly struck me: Who was Dred Scott? Who was this slave who had the audacity to think he could sue for his freedom through the white man's court system, and the courage to keep that up for 11 years? I really started wondering about him," Shurtleff said.

Shurtleff found that little had been written about Scott, and Scott himself was illiterate. Shurtleff found that opinions of Scott ranged from "he was shiftless and lazy" to that he had "high intellect and courage."

"I wanted to get to the truth of it, out of curiosity," Shurtleff said. "So I embarked on a research project and started thinking, I need to tell this story to everybody."

In 2002, he was at a conference in Washington, D.C., and decided "to take an extra day and go down to southern Virginia, called Southampton County, where he was born, and do a little research," he said. "That just got me going."

Shurtleff went to the cotton fields and swamps there. Soon, he would visit a slave cemetery in Alabama where Scott's brother is buried. Later, Shurtleff sprained his ankle on the riverboat quay in St. Louis where Scott worked. Shurtleff went to where Scott met his wife in Minnesota. He went to the Missouri courthouse where Scott won, then lost, his freedom.