Freedom's Journey: African American Voices of the Civil War (The Library of Black America series) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556525214 ISBN 13: 9781556525216

Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books, 2004

Synopsis

Some were slaves who endured their last years of servitude before escaping from their masters; some were soldiers who fought for the freedom of their brethren and for equal rights; some were reporters who covered the defeat of their oppressors. Here, for the first time, are collected the testimonies of African Americans who witnessed the Civil War. They include the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass on the meaning of the war; Martin R. Delany on his meeting with Lincoln to gain permission to raise an army of African Americans; Susie King Taylor on her life as a laundress and nurse to a Union regiment in the deep South; Elizabeth Keckley, Mary Todd Lincoln's seamstress, on Abraham Lincoln's journey to Richmond after its fall; Elijah P. Marrs on rising from slave to Union sergeant while fighting for his freedom in Kentucky; letters from black soldiers to black newspapers; and much more.

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From Booklist

Aside from providing the kind of authoritative insight that primary sources always afford, this collection of African American perspectives on the Civil War by people who experienced it shows yet again the breadth and depth of African American letters of the time and of the struggle against racism--not just slavery--that African Americans then waged. The South considered slavery a cornerstone of the Confederacy, and far too many in the North felt that trusting a colored man with a weapon would lead to the unthinkable equality of races. Although much has been and continues to be written about the war, and about the participation of--to use the contemporary term--colored troops, not many collections of material by those troops are readily available, and Freedom's Journey probably fills a gap in most general collections. An excellent compilation, not least because its contents directly refute any notion that the Civil War had nothing to do with slavery. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Lawrence Hill Books
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1556525214
• ISBN 13: 9781556525216
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 570
• Editor: Yacovone Donald