Download or read book Slaves Contrabands And Freedmen Union Policy In The Civil War written by CDR Michelle J. Howard USN and published by Pickle Partners Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-06 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines Union slave policy in the Civil War. Prior to the initiation of hostilities, President Abraham Lincoln stated that the conflict between the states was over the preservation of the Union, and not over slavery. The administration was concerned that a war policy centered on slavery would result in the loss of the Border States. The war started without a slave policy promulgated from the administration to the War Department. By May of 1861, fugitive slaves had entered Union lines and were retained by military commanders as “Contraband of War.” The Union employed over 200,000 fugitive slaves before the war ended. Military commanders were forced to create slave policy to handle overwhelming numbers of runaway slaves. Local military policy impacted the administration’s agenda. In response, the administration would variously support, dismiss, or ignore the commanders. As the war progressed, Union slave policy caused conflict within and outside the military chain of command. As the conflicts became publicized, President Lincoln created or agreed to slavery policies that conformed to changing congressional and public opinion. The administration had been forced to deal with the issue it had sought to avoid. Military decisions in the field had impacted national goals.

Download or read book From Contraband to Freedman written by Louis S. Gerteis and published by . This book was released on 1969 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This thesis posits that for the military and many government officials, emancipation of slaves was a military, not social, necessity. Some freedmen joined the Union Army, while approximately 193,000 of almost 1,000,000 freedmen within Union lines were organized by the federal government as laborers in contraband camps. The Freedmen's Bureau was created within the War Department in 1865 to aid the approximately 1,000,000 former slaves through education, health care and employment. The author asserts that because emancipation came as a war necessity, the contraband labor system succeeded only to the extent that the freedmen usefully served the needs of the Union Army. Once the Civil War ended, the system virtually collapsed and the Freedmen's Bureau did little more than liquidate the wartime labor programs while facilitating the restoration of antebellum property rights and trying to institute a contract labor system instead of creating a class of independent black farmers.

Download or read book Bluejackets and Contrabands written by Barbara Brooks Tomblin and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2009-10-09 with total page 372 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the lesser-known stories of the Civil War is the role played by escaped slaves in the Union blockade along the Atlantic coast. From the beginning of the war, many African American refugees sought avenues of escape to the North. Due to their sheer numbers, those who reached Union forces presented a problem for the military. Fortunately, the First Confiscation Act of 1861 permitted the seizure of property used in support of the South's war effort, including slaves. Eventually regarded as contraband of war, the runaways became known as contrabands. In Bluejackets and Contrabands, Barbara Brooks Tomblin examines the relationship between the Union Navy and the contrabands. The navy established colonies for the former slaves, and, in return, some contrabands served as crewmen on navy ships and gunboats and as river pilots, spies, and guides. Tomblin presents a rare picture of the contrabands and casts light on the vital contributions of African Americans to the Union Navy and the Union cause.

Download or read book From Contraband to Freedman written by Louis Gerteis and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1973-08-24 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Sick from Freedom written by Jim Downs and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-01 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bondspeople who fled from slavery during and after the Civil War did not expect that their flight toward freedom would lead to sickness, disease, suffering, and death. But the war produced the largest biological crisis of the nineteenth century, and as historian Jim Downs reveals in this groundbreaking volume, it had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of freed people. In Sick from Freedom, Downs recovers the untold story of one of the bitterest ironies in American history--that the emancipation of the slaves, seen as one of the great turning points in U.S. history, had devastating consequences for innumerable freed people. Drawing on massive new research into the records of the Medical Division of the Freedmen's Bureau-a nascent national health system that cared for more than one million freed slaves-he shows how the collapse of the plantation economy released a plague of lethal diseases. With emancipation, African Americans seized the chance to move, migrating as never before. But in their journey to freedom, they also encountered yellow fever, smallpox, cholera, dysentery, malnutrition, and exposure. To address this crisis, the Medical Division hired more than 120 physicians, establishing some forty underfinanced and understaffed hospitals scattered throughout the South, largely in response to medical emergencies. Downs shows that the goal of the Medical Division was to promote a healthy workforce, an aim which often excluded a wide range of freedpeople, including women, the elderly, the physically disabled, and children. Downs concludes by tracing how the Reconstruction policy was then implemented in the American West, where it was disastrously applied to Native Americans. The widespread medical calamity sparked by emancipation is an overlooked episode of the Civil War and its aftermath, poignantly revealed in Sick from Freedom.

Download or read book Grant Lincoln and the Freedmen Reminiscences of the Civil War written by John Eaton and published by BIG BYTE BOOKS. This book was released on 2016-02-02 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With thousands of ex-slaves fleeing to Union lines and the prospect of millions more to be emancipated, Abraham Lincoln and General Ulysses S. Grant foresaw enormous challenges ahead. What would be done with and for the freedmen? Grant turned to Colonel (later General) John Eaton to manage the gathering crisis. Eaton felt wholly inadequate to the huge task and tried to beg off, citing the resistance he knew he would encounter from many quarters, including Union officers who used free blacks as servants. Grant quietly replied, "Mr. Eaton, I have ordered you to report to me in person, and I will take care of you." This book, far too long out-of-print, details Eaton's approach to establishing policies that met the needs of freed slaves, as well as the military aims of General Grant and the governing aims of Abraham Lincoln. With personal anecdotes included from his meetings with Lincoln and Grant, you'll read stories here that you may not have read elsewhere. Eaton came to understand that the former slaves yearned desperately for their freedom, were entitled to their personhood, and he was astonished at their hunger for books and learning. He established schools and in 1863 and was an advocate of Negro suffrage. Eaton was made colonel of the 63rd Regiment of Colored Infantry. For the first time, this important work is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.

Download or read book Freedom Volume 1 Series 1 The Destruction of Slavery written by Ira Berlin and published by CUP Archive. This book was released on 1985 with total page 906 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contains primary source material.

Download or read book The Gettysburg Address written by Abraham Lincoln and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Address was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.

Download or read book Emancipating Slaves Enslaving Free Men written by Jeffrey Hummel and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2013-11-18 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book combines a sweeping narrative of the Civil War with a bold new look at the war’s significance for American society. Professor Hummel sees the Civil War as America’s turning point: simultaneously the culmination and repudiation of the American revolution. While the chapters tell the story of the Civil War and discuss the issues raised in readable prose, each chapter is followed by a detailed bibliographical essay, looking at all the different major works on the subject, with their varying ideological viewpoints and conclusions. In his economic analysis of slavery, Professor Hummel takes a different view than the two major poles which have determined past discussions of the topic. While some writers claim that slavery was unprofitable and harmful to the Southern economy, and others maintain it was profitable and efficient for the South, Hummel uses the economic concept of Deadweight Loss to show that slavery was both highly profitable for slave owners and harmful to Southern economic development. While highly critical of Confederate policy, Hummel argues that the war was fought to prevent secession, not to end slavery, and that preservation of the Union was not necessary to end slavery: the North could have let the South secede peacefully, and slavery would still have been quickly terminated. Part of Hummel’s argument is that the South crucially relied on the Northern states to return runaway slaves to their owners. This new edition has a substantial new introduction by the author, correcting and supplementing the account given in the first edition (the major revision is an increase in the estimate of total casualties) and a foreword by John Majewski, a rising star of Civil War studies.

Download or read book Freedom written by and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1985 with total page 968 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Troubled Refuge written by Chandra Manning and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2017-07-25 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of What This Cruel War Was Over, a vivid portrait of the Union army’s escaped-slave refugee camps and how they shaped the course of emancipation and citizenship in the United States. Chandra Manning casts in a wholly original light what it was like to escape slavery, how emancipation happened, and how citizenship in the United States was transformed. This reshaping of hard structures of power would matter not only for slaves turned citizens, but for all Americans. Integrating a wealth of new findings, this vivid portrait of the Union army’s escaped-slave refugee camps shows how they shaped the course of emancipation and citizenship in the United States. Drawing on records of the Union and Confederate armies, the letters and diaries of soldiers, transcribed testimonies of former slaves, and more, Manning allows us to accompany the black men, women, and children who sought out the Union army in hopes of achieving autonomy for themselves and their communities. It also raised, for the first time, humanitarian questions about refugees in wartime and legal questions about civil and military authority with which we still wrestle, as well as redefined American citizenship, to the benefit, but also to the lasting cost of, African Americans.

Download or read book Free at Last written by Ira Berlin and published by Booksales. This book was released on 1997-03-01 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Summary: Brings together letters, along with personal testimony, official transcripts, and other records documenting the story of how black Americans achieved their freedom.

Download or read book Lincoln s Emancipation Proclamation written by Allen C. Guelzo and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2006-11-07 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the nation's foremost Lincoln scholars offers an authoritative consideration of the document that represents the most far-reaching accomplishment of our greatest president. No single official paper in American history changed the lives of as many Americans as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. But no American document has been held up to greater suspicion. Its bland and lawyerlike language is unfavorably compared to the soaring eloquence of the Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural; its effectiveness in freeing the slaves has been dismissed as a legal illusion. And for some African-Americans the Proclamation raises doubts about Lincoln himself. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation dispels the myths and mistakes surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation and skillfully reconstructs how America's greatest president wrote the greatest American proclamation of freedom.

Download or read book Freedom Volume 2 Series 1 The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor The Upper South written by Ira Berlin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-07-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As slavery collapsed during the American Civil War, former slaves struggled to secure their liberty, reconstitute their families, and create the institutions befitting a free people. This volume of Freedom presents a documentary history of the emergence of free-labor relations in different settings in the Upper South. At first, most federal officials hoped to mobilize former slaves without either transforming the conflict into a war of liberation or assuming responsibility for the young, the old, or others not suitable for military employment. But as the Union army came to depend on black workers and as the number of destitute freedpeople mounted, authorities at all levels grappled with intertwined questions of freedom, labor and welfare. Meanwhile, the former slaves pursued their own objectives, working within the constraints imposed by the war and Union occupation to fashion new lives as free people. The Civil War sealed the fate of slavery only to open a contest over the meaning of freedom. This volume of Freedom documents an important chapter in that contest.

Download or read book Alexandria s Freedmen s Cemetery A Legacy of Freedom written by Char McCargo Bah, Edited by Mumini M. Bah and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2019 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "At the beginning of the Civil War, Federal troops secured Alexandria as Union territory. Former slaves, called contrabands, poured in to obtain protection from their former masters. Due to overcrowding, mortality rates were high. Authorities seized an undeveloped parcel of land on South Washington Street, and by March 1864, it had been opened as a cemetery for African Americans. Between 1864 and 1868, more than 1,700 contrabands and freedmen were buried there. For nearly eighty years, the cemetery lay undisturbed and was eventually forgotten. Rediscovered in 1996, it has now been preserved as a monument to the courage and sacrifice of those buried within. Author and researcher Char McCargo Bah recounts the stories of those men and women and the search for their descendants."-- back cover.

Download or read book Behind the Scenes Or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House written by Elizabeth Keckley and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1988 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part slave narrative, part memoir, and part sentimental fiction Behind the Scenes depicts Elizabeth Keckley's years as a salve and subsequent four years in Abraham Lincoln's White House during the Civil War. Through the eyes of this black woman, we see a wide range of historical figures and events of the antebellum South, the Washington of the Civil War years, and the final stages of the war.

Download or read book They Knew Lincoln written by John E. Washington and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-08 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1942 and now reprinted for the first time, They Knew Lincoln is a classic in African American history and Lincoln studies. Part memoir and part history, the book is an account of John E. Washington's childhood among African Americans in Washington, DC, and of the black people who knew or encountered Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln. Washington recounted stories told by his grandmother's elderly friends--stories of escaping from slavery, meeting Lincoln in the Capitol, learning of the president's assassination, and hearing ghosts at Ford's Theatre. He also mined the US government archives and researched little-known figures in Lincoln's life, including William Johnson, who accompanied Lincoln from Springfield to Washington, and William Slade, the steward in Lincoln's White House. Washington was fascinated from childhood by the question of how much African Americans themselves had shaped Lincoln's views on slavery and race, and he believed Lincoln's Haitian-born barber, William de Fleurville, was a crucial influence. Washington also extensively researched Elizabeth Keckly, the dressmaker to Mary Todd Lincoln, and advanced a new theory of who helped her write her controversial book, Behind the Scenes, A new introduction by Kate Masur places Washington's book in its own context, explaining the contents of They Knew Lincoln in light of not only the era of emancipation and the Civil War, but also Washington's own times, when the nation's capital was a place of great opportunity and creativity for members of the African American elite. On publication, a reviewer noted that the "collection of Negro stories, memories, legends about Lincoln" seemed "to fill such an obvious gap in the material about Lincoln that one wonders why no one ever did it before." This edition brings it back to print for a twenty-first century readership that remains fascinated with Abraham Lincoln.