Rethinking American Emancipation: Legacies of Slavery and the Quest for Black Freedom

On January 1, 1863, Abraham Lincoln announced the Emancipation Proclamation, an event that soon became a bold statement of presidential power, a dramatic shift in the rationale for fighting the Civil War, and a promise of future freedom for four million enslaved Americans. But the document marked only a beginning; freedom's future was anything but certain. Thereafter, the significance of both the Proclamation and of emancipation assumed new and diverse meanings, as African Americans explored freedom and the nation attempted to rebuild itself. Despite the sweeping power of Lincoln's Proclamation, struggle, rather than freedom, defined emancipation's broader legacy. The nine essays in this volume unpack the long history and varied meanings of the emancipation of American slaves. Together, the contributions argue that 1863 did not mark an end point or a mission accomplished in black freedom; rather, it initiated the beginning of an ongoing, contested process.

Author: William A. Link
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 11/12/2015
Pages: 296
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.89lbs
Size: 9.07h x 6.01w x 0.77d
ISBN: 9781107421349

Review Citation(s):
Choice 06/01/2016

About the Author
Broomall, James J.: - James J. Broomall is Director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War and Assistant Professor in the History Department at Shepherd University. A contributor to Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South and Civil War History, Broomall's writings have also appeared in A Companion to the American Civil War in the Journal of the Civil War Era.Link, William A.: - William A. Link is Richard J. Milbauer Professor of History at the University of Florida. His books include Roots of Secession: Slavery and Politics in Antebellum Virginia; Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism; Atlanta, Cradle of the New South: Race and Remembering in the Civil War's Aftermath; and Southern Crucible: The Making of the American South.