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UnCivil Wars
Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation
This collection of eleven original essays interrogates the concept of freedom and recenters our understanding of the process of emancipation. Who defined freedom, and what did freedom mean to nineteenth-century African Americans, both during and after slavery? Did freedom just mean the absence of constraint and a widening of personal choice, or did it extend to the ballot box, to education, to equality of opportunity? In examining such questions, rather than defining every aspect of postemancipation life as a new form of freedom, these essays develop the work of scholars who are looking at how belonging to an empowered government or community defines the outcome of emancipation.Some essays in this collection disrupt the traditional story and time-frame of emancipation. Others offer trenchant renderings of emancipation, with new interpretations of the language and politics of democracy. Still others sidestep academic conventions to speak personally about the politics of emancipation historiography, reconsidering how historians have used source material for understanding subjects such as violence and the suffering of refugee women and children. Together the essays show that the question of freedom--its contested meanings, its social relations, and its beneficiaries--remains central to understanding the complex historical process known as Justin Behrend, Gregory P. Downs, Jim Downs, Carole Emberton, Eric Foner, Thavolia Glymph, Chandra Manning, Kate Masur, Richard Newman, James Oakes, Susan O'Donovan, Hannah Rosen, Brenda E. Stevenson.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2017
About the author
David W. Blight
125 books310 followersDavid W. Blight is Class of 1954 Professor of American History and Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era; and Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory; and annotated editions of Douglass’s first two autobiographies. He has worked on Douglass much of his professional life, and been awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Abraham Lincoln Prize, and the Frederick Douglass Prize, among others.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 3, 2017
Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation edited by David W. Blight and Jim Downs
Well this was a profound and interesting series of essays that look beyond what we know as the concept of freedom after emancipation for enslaved people. Each essay takes a different look at how history concerning the Civil War and the Reconstruction era discusses what freedom actually means and how the horror of slavery defines freedom. These essays cover an array of topics regarding emancipation and the war such as the experience of Black women and children during that time, sexual violence, and culture. It begs the question of what freedom actually means, what it looks like to those that were in bondage and how the reality differed from what the North believed was happening and what Southerners allowed to happen after emancipation. But what I found most interesting about all of these essays are the ways the writers described in depth the way the studies have been conducted in the past and how a different take on the narrative would add more depth and understanding to the experience of newly freed people.
The most shocking essay for me and the one that really stood out upon completing this book was the essay regarding Black women and children. There are some horrors you simply can’t imagine and to see them laid so bare on the page really made me emotional. In this essay the author, Thavolia Glymph, also discussed refugees and refugee centers that were mostly Black women and children during the war. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen discussions regarding refugees during the Civil War so to read about their experiences and the horror that ensued was enlightening but also extremely disheartening.
I would definitely recommend this book. I think each essay brings up very valid points about how the history of Civil War and Reconstruction has been told and the ways in which it can improve. These essays disparage the revisionist attitude that some take regarding the cause of the Civil War and also dismantles the object racism in some of the research that shows Black enslaved people as inferior. Concise, in-depth, well researched and full of information this series of essay does a great job at presenting the ways in which research should expand in regards to emancipation.
Thank you Netgalley for this book in exchange for an honest review.
Well this was a profound and interesting series of essays that look beyond what we know as the concept of freedom after emancipation for enslaved people. Each essay takes a different look at how history concerning the Civil War and the Reconstruction era discusses what freedom actually means and how the horror of slavery defines freedom. These essays cover an array of topics regarding emancipation and the war such as the experience of Black women and children during that time, sexual violence, and culture. It begs the question of what freedom actually means, what it looks like to those that were in bondage and how the reality differed from what the North believed was happening and what Southerners allowed to happen after emancipation. But what I found most interesting about all of these essays are the ways the writers described in depth the way the studies have been conducted in the past and how a different take on the narrative would add more depth and understanding to the experience of newly freed people.
The most shocking essay for me and the one that really stood out upon completing this book was the essay regarding Black women and children. There are some horrors you simply can’t imagine and to see them laid so bare on the page really made me emotional. In this essay the author, Thavolia Glymph, also discussed refugees and refugee centers that were mostly Black women and children during the war. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen discussions regarding refugees during the Civil War so to read about their experiences and the horror that ensued was enlightening but also extremely disheartening.
I would definitely recommend this book. I think each essay brings up very valid points about how the history of Civil War and Reconstruction has been told and the ways in which it can improve. These essays disparage the revisionist attitude that some take regarding the cause of the Civil War and also dismantles the object racism in some of the research that shows Black enslaved people as inferior. Concise, in-depth, well researched and full of information this series of essay does a great job at presenting the ways in which research should expand in regards to emancipation.
Thank you Netgalley for this book in exchange for an honest review.
May 22, 2018
Def a book for professors, but that's okay because I'm one of them. Mandatory for any graduate seminar on 19th cen US history or the Civil War, about a dozen essays that pretty much outline the state of the art for Reconstruction historiography an with notes that point towards further research. Every piece could stand on its own as a worthwhile journal article, and I wouldn't be surprised if most or all of these evolved into a book sometime soon. My favorites were Carole Emberton's piece about feeling emotion as a professional historian and Thavolia Glymph's essay about contrabands being America's first refugees.. A couple were overly analytical and jargon-heavy, but most were very insightful and made me think about Civil War and Reconstruction in a slightly new way - this would be a great companion piece to Eric Foner's magisterial "Reconstruction." This anthology grew out of a 2011 conference at Yale (I was there), they hold one every year that is free and open to the public.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews