The Black Experience in the Civil War South

(Hardback)

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Description

The first book of its kind to appear in a generation, this comprehensive study details the experiences of the black men, women, and children who lived in the South during the traumatic time of secession and civil war. The Black Experience in the Civil War South is the first comprehensive study of the Southern black wartime experience to appear in a generation. Incorporating the most recent scholarship, this thematically organized book does justice to the richness of its subject, looking at the lives of blacks in the Confederate states and the nonseceding Southern states; at blacks on farms and plantations and in towns and cities; at blacks employed in industry and the military; and at black men, women, and children. Drawing on memoirs, autobiographies, and other original source materials, the author details the experiences of blacks who took up residence in Union "contraband camps" and on free-labor plantations and those who enlisted in the Union army. He introduces individuals who escaped from slavery, as well as the small minority of Southern blacks who were free when the war began. Most significantly, this revealing study deals not only with those who gained freedom during the war, but those whose freedom came only after the conflict's end.

Reviews

this is an ideal primer for a college-level US history survey. Summing Up: Recommended. Undergraduate collections. * Choice *
Encompassing erudition deserving of a wide audience of scholars and students, The Black Experience in the Civil War South is a fine continuance of the scholarly trend of slavery studies focused on slaves, not masters. African American emancipation destablized the Confederacy and wreaked the greatest change on the peculiar institution since the invention of the cotton gin. * Journal of American History *
Ash succeeds both in summarizing major developments and in offering the 'fresh look' promised by the series. * The Journal of Southern History *

Author Bio

Stephen V. Ash is professor of history at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.