Slaves No More: Three Essays on Emancipation and the Civil War

History

Berlin, Ira

Fields, Barbara J.

Miller, Steven F.

Reidy, Joseph P.

Rowland, Leslie S.

Americas

Cambridge University Press

The Civil War not only brought freedom to slaves, but it also brought military duty for many American blacks at the front lines of the warring armies. The drama of the military involvement of black soldiers comes to life in this volume. The extraordinary and virtually unknown documents in this book - written by slaves and masters, blacks and whites, soldiers and citizens - make vivid the monumental struggles of the 1860s. Drawn from the extensive records of the National Archives. this unprecedented written record came about through the intense involvement of Union and Confederate military officers and policy makers in the process of emancipation. The documents, together with the interpretive essays, offer a panoramic view of a central event in American history, as well as a unique look at revolutionary change in the day-to-day lives of men and women who experienced it.

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 2 Volume Paperback Set: Volume 1, The Black Military Experience: Series II

The American Civil War destroyed slavery in the South. At first, most white Americans denied what would eventually seem self-evident. But black Americans saw clearly that the sectional conflict was their greatest opportunity for liberation. This volume of Freedom presents a documentary record of the transformation of the Civil War into a war against slavery, and the slaves' role in their own emancipation. The Destruction of Slavery shows the process by which a war for Union became a war for freedom. It demonstrates how three interrelated circumstances opened opportunities to slaves: first, the character of slave society; second, the course of the war itself; and third, the policies of the Union and Confederate governments. Together, they made emancipation an uneven, halting, and often tenuous process in which slaves played the central role.

Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 2 Volume Paperback Set: Volume 1, The Destruction of Slavery: Series I

Glymph, Thavolia

In the aftermath of civil war and emancipation, Southerners whose lives had been shaped by the slave system had to confront the fact that all people of African descent would be free. Some people - most but not all of them former slaves - rejoiced at the prospect. Others - including most former slaveholders - dreaded it. None of them knew exactly what shape the new order would take, but all of them came sooner or later to understand that the world they had been born into was gone forever. Northerners, too, became embroiled in the creation of a new social system. This documentary history examines the tearing apart and recreation of institutions and habits of thought that freedom required. By the close of the year 1865, and despite competing understandings about 'freedom' and 'free labor', slavery and much of the society that had rested on it had been dismantled. In its place arose the scaffolding for a new South, one premised on contract and self-ownership.

Freedom: Volume 1, Series 3: Land and Labor, 1865: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861–1867 (Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation)

Hahn, Steven

Rodrigue, John C.

O'Donovan, Susan E.

The three essays in this volume present an introduction to history of the emancipation of the slaves during the Civil War. The first essay traces the destruction of slavery by discussing the shift from a war for the Union to a war against slavery. The slaves are shown to have shaped the destiny of the nation through their determination to place their liberty on the wartime agenda. The second essay examines the evolution of freedom in occupied areas of the lower and upper South. The struggle of those freed to obtain economic independence in difficult wartime circumstances indicates conflicting conceptions of freedom among former slaves and slaveholders, Northern soldiers and civilians. The third essay demonstrates how the enlistment and military service of nearly 200,000 slaves hastened the transformation of the war into a struggle for universal liberty, and how this experience shaped the lives of former slaves long after the war had ended.

When nearly 200,000 black men, most of them former slaves, entered the Union army and navy, they transformed the Civil War into a struggle for liberty and changed the course of American history. Freedom's Soldiers tells the story of those men in their own words and the words of other eyewitnesses. These moving letters, affidavits, and memorials--drawn from the records of the National Archives--reveal the variety and complexity of the African-American experience during the era of emancipation.

Freedom's Soldiers: The Black Military Experience in the Civil War

Reidy, Joseph Patrick

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