A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and the Freedmen's Rights / Edition 2000

by Herman Belz

Overview

A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedmen’s Rights, 1861–1866, is an account of how laws, policies and constitutional amendments defining and protecting the personal liberty and civil rights of the country’s African American population were adopted during the Civil War. A study in legal and constitutional history, it complements and forms a necessary predicate to the social history of emancipation that is the principal focus of contemporary Civil War scholarship. The relevance of the legal dimension in the struggle for black freedom is attested by the observation that many slaves "learned the letter of the law so they could seemingly recite from memory" passages from congressional measures prohibiting the return of escaped slaves to disloyal owners and guaranteeing their personal liberty.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823220106
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	01/01/2000
Series:	Reconstructing America
Edition description:	2000th ed.
Pages:	199
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Herman Belz is Professor of History Emeritus at the Universityof Maryland. He is the author of some fifty-six articles or chapters in books and nineteen essays, and he has served as consultant to the American Historical Association’s Constitutional History in the Schools Project, National Endowment for the Humanities, Educational Testing Service, National Video Communications, Vision Associates, and the Carter Museum and Library. Professor Belz has won grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the American Bar Foundation for Legal History, among others. His first book was awarded the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association. He has served on numerous Universityof Maryland committees, was Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of History, and was a member of the Campus Senate Executive Committee and a member of the Graduate Council. Professor Belz was a Visiting Research Scholar in the James Madison Program at Princeton Universityin the academic year 2001–2002 and was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities in 2005.

Table of Contents

	Introduction to the 2000 Edition	vii
	Preface	xiii
	Introduction	xv
1	Emancipation Legislation and the Right of Personal Liberty, 1862	3
2	Military Service and National Citizenship	17
3	Presidential Reconstruction and Freedmen's Policy	35
4	Congressional Reconstruction and Freedmen's Rights	51
5	Freedmen's Bureau Legislation and Civil Rights	69
6	The Freedmen's Bureau Act of 1865	92
7	Civil Rights, Federalism, and the Thirteenth Amendment	113
8	Equality Before the Law	138
9	The Civil Rights Settlement of 1866	157
	Bibliography	183
	Index	193

Editorial Reviews

This is the best, if not definitive study of this . . . topic.

East Texas Historical Association

A New Birth of Freedom provides an intricate history of the Republican Party and Freedman's rights from 1861-1866, providing an account of how laws, policies and constitutional amendments defining liberty and civil rights were refined during the Civil War. A New Birth of Freedom is for college-level students of civil rights and American history: it provides a scholarly approach in analyzing the legal dimensions of these struggles.

Internet Bookwatch

This is a very interesting and useful study.

The American Journal of Legal History