Book review: Freedom’s Women
As we close out Black History Month, and begin Women’s History Month, this seems like a fitting time to discuss how black women in the region of Milliken’s Bend were affected by the war. One of the finest works I more »
Category Archives: Emancipation
Contrabands: a new life of freedom or a return to slavery?
In 1861, at Fortress Monroe, Virginia, Union general Benjamin Butler refused to return three runaway slaves to their owners, even though Federal law required him to do so under the Fugitive Slave Act. Butler had a different take. Southern law more »
Who freed the slaves?
It often bothers me when I hear people say, “Lincoln set the slaves free.” He did not. What he did do was to issue a proclamation that – by declaration – freed those persons held in bondage in certain specific more »
Emancipation – It Changed Everything (or Did It?)
150 years ago, the entire reason for the Civil War changed. Although the majority of men in the Northern ranks enlisted to restore the Union, on Jan. 1, 1863, President Lincoln’s final Emancipation Proclamation declared that all persons held in more »