Free at Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (Publications of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project) - Softcover

Berlin, Ira; Fields, Barbara J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565841204 ISBN 13: 9781565841208

Publisher: New Press, The, 1993

Synopsis

Widely recognized as "one of the nation's foremost scholars on the slave era" (Boston Globe), Bancroft Prize-winning historian Ira Berlin has changed the way we think about African American life in slavery and freedom. This classic volume, now available in a handsome new edition, is an indispensable resource for educators and general readers alike.

Free at Last brings together some of the most remarkable correspondence ever written by Americans. These letters, personal testimonies, official transcripts, and other records convey the struggle of black men and women to overthrow the slave system, to aid the Union cause, and to give meaning to their newly won freedom in a war-torn nation. Drawn from the landmark reference volumes of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, this "work of deep significance for all Americans" (Washington Post Book World) offers a unique way of understanding emancipation.

About this title

About the Author:

Ira Berlin is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, where he lives. He is the author of Many Thousands Gone and Generations of Captivity and the co-editor of Remembering Slavery, Families and Freedom, and Slavery in New York (The New Press). His books have won the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Abraham Lincoln Prize, among many other awards.

From Publishers Weekly:

This superb anthology makes available to general readers selected materials originally published in, or projected for, the multivolume reference work Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation (Cambridge University Press). This collection's editors are all connected with the Freedom Project; Berlin is the coordinator. The letters, reports and depositions included here, largely drawn from Union records, tell at first hand the human story of African Americans in the Civil War, which, the editors contend, was also a second American revolution. Between 1861 and 1865 government was transformed, citizienship redefined, social classes rearranged--and blacks were at the center of the process. The texts offered have a common denominator: the determination displayed by African American men and women to control their own destinies, especially in relations with whites. The editing and annotations are models of their kind, explaining and clarifying while preserving the originals' authenticity and immediacy. Illustrations.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: New Press, The
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 1565841204
• ISBN 13: 9781565841208
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 608