Wartime Genesis of Free Labor The Upper South

As slavery collapsed during the American Civil War, former slaves struggled to secure their liberty. This volume of Freedom presents a history of the emergence of free-labour relations in different settings in the Upper South. At first, most federal officials hoped to mobilise former slaves trying to avoid a war of liberation, but as the Union army came to depend upon black workers and as the number of destitute freed people mounted, authorities grappled with questions of freedom, labour and welfare. Meanwhile, former slaves pursued their own objectives to fashion new lives as free people. The Civil War sealed the fate of slavery only to open a contest over the meaning of freedom. This volume documents an important chapter in that contest.Berlin, Ira is the author of 'Wartime Genesis of Free Labor The Upper South', published 1993 under ISBN 9780521417426 and ISBN 0521417422.