Emancipation

Catalog description

The emancipation of four million slaves during the Civil War was the single most revolutionary social transformation in American history. Most accounts focus on the Emancipation Proclamation and oversimplify a process that took generations to complete and involved thousands of men and women struggling for freedom before and during the war. This course will explore the so-called "first emancipation" in the North after the American Revolution, the development of an antislavery movement committed to a number of federal policies designed to bring about what Abraham Lincoln called the "ultimate extinction" of slavery, the implementation of those policies during the Civil War, and their aftermath in Reconstruction. In addition to the Emancipation Proclamation, we will explore the various antislavery statutes passed by Congress as well as the decision to press for a Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery everywhere in the United States. But we will also try to balance the political history of emancipation with a social history of emancipation as it happened on the ground in the Civil War South. Thus, along with the policymakers in Washington, we will consider the role of the slaves and Union soldiers in the wartime emancipation process, the obstacles to emancipation, and the postwar struggle to secure freedom and expand its meaning.