Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery

by Joseph P. Reidy

Overview

As students of the Civil War have long known, emancipation was not merely a product of Lincoln's proclamation or of Confederate defeat in April 1865. It was a process that required more than legal or military action. With enslaved people fully engaged as actors, emancipation necessitated a fundamental reordering of a way of life whose implications stretched well beyond the former slave states. Slavery did not die quietly or quickly, nor did freedom fulfill every dream of the enslaved or their allies. The process unfolded unevenly.

In this sweeping reappraisal of slavery's end during the Civil War era, Joseph P. Reidy employs the lenses of time, space, and individuals' sense of personal and social belonging to understand how participants and witnesses coped with drastic change, its erratic pace, and its unforeseeable consequences. Emancipation disrupted everyday habits, causing sensations of disorientation that sometimes intensified the experience of reality and sometimes muddled it. While these illusions of emancipation often mixed disappointment with hope, through periods of even intense frustration they sustained the promise that the struggle for freedom would result in victory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781469648378
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	01/15/2019
Series:	Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	520
File size:	25 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Joseph P. Reidy is professor emeritus of history at Howard University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Reidy's remarkable Illusions of Emancipation puts us in the midst of revolutionary events as only history's participants could have made and experienced them. Reidy offers us multiple perspectives on moments of trauma, triumph, and everyday life that reveal emancipation as the unexpected, determined, lurching, and slippery process that it was, driven by struggles of many sorts in an environment of volatility and uncertainty. Compelling reading for anyone interested in how history unfolds.—Steven Hahn, author of A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration

In this highly anticipated study, Reidy encapsulates a half century of scholarship on emancipation and its consequences while advancing a fresh and innovative interpretation. Employing something akin to a historian's theory of relativity, Reidy convincingly demonstrates that the supposedly fixed concepts of 'time,' 'space,' and 'home' assumed an essential fluidity within the context of war and social upheaval. This boldly original approach to the destruction of slavery—from one of the foremost scholars in the field—is sure to become indispensable reading.—John C. Rodrigue, author of Lincoln and Reconstruction

Reidy compellingly shows that the wartime emancipation was not a linear process but, instead, circuitous and unpredictable. A helpful, provocative, and groundbreaking book, and a valuable contribution to historians' ongoing efforts to write an adequate history of what Reidy calls 'the collapse of slavery.'—Kate Masur, author of An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C.

Editorial Reviews

03/01/2019

Reidy (From Slavery to Agrarian Capitalism in the Cotton Plantation South) draws on the massive set of documents related to emancipation, black soldiering, Reconstruction, and related issues in the National Archives to bring us into the intimate worlds of people working out the meanings of "freedom" during the Civil War era. The author's insightful study of the many complex, contradictory, and contentious ideas about and engagements with fighting for or against black freedom shows that experience counted more than ideology, practice more than promise, in determining the scope and scale of equality. By his reckoning, blacks drove and thus in critical ways defined the issues through such actions as throwing off bondage, fighting for the Union, creating their own institutions, and working to gain property. One conclusion that comes from Reidy's telling and compelling accounts is the persistence black Americans used to claim and stake out freedom, however incomplete, on their terms. VERDICT Reidy's important book shows that the movement toward freedom was neither linear nor inevitable but was and must be constant. In that, he speaks to not only history but our own day.—Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Library Journal

Reidy's important book shows that the movement toward freedom was neither linear nor inevitable but was and must be constant. In that, he speaks to not only history but our own day.—Library Journal

[A] comprehensive analysis of of the journey from slavery to freedom. . . . Explaining the complex and changing concept of home is Reidy's most insightful historiographic contribution. He demonstrates that establishing a new home was much more than a physical endeavor for newly freed people. It involved establishing a distinct identity in relation to the new political, economic, and social order.—Civil War Times

As one of the field's senior scholars, Reidy brings to bear decades of immersion in the relevant primary sources. . .[and] demonstrates an impressive mastery of the secondary literature. This powerfully written and deeply researched book. . . will be welcomed by scholars who are just beginning their study of slavery in the U.S. as well as specialists.—The Civil War Monitor

Reidy peers into the lives of enslaved people during emancipation, paying special attention to their experiences under Confederate authority.—Choice Reviews

An engrossing and textured account of the emancipation process that reveals the myriad ways in which it was experienced and understood by black Americans. . . . Anyone wanting to comprehend Civil War emancipation from the vantage point of people of African descent should place this book at the top of their reading list.—Virginia Magazine

Restore[s] to view the raw, lived immediacy of emancipation. . . . Peering through three prisms familiar to Civil War Americans, Reidy's book demonstrates the constant reckoning that the conflict demanded of the enslaved.—Journal of the Shenandoah Valley During the Civil War Era

Illusions of Emancipation is a readable, comprehensive account of the success and the shortcomings of the long campaign to abolish slavery in the United States. It reminds readers how incomplete the process was in 1865 and how many shadows of slavery remain today.—Journal of Southern History

A fascinating, wide-ranging account of the sundry ways in which African Americans attempted to make sense of their newfound but often illusive freedom. . . . In carefully revealing the limitations of emancipation and elucidating the complexity of what freedom might mean, Reidy has provided a more nuanced picture of African American experiences during the Civil War.—North Carolina Historical Review

Reidy's persuasive and paradigm-shifting interpretative framework offers new understandings of emancipation without diminishing the active role with of African Americans in their liberation."—Ohio Valley History

Reidy's mastery of the source material is impressive…Illusions of Emancipation is certain to attain an iconic status in the field of Reconstruction historiography. Current scholars and the next generation of graduate students will no doubt be compelled to work through hits theoretical implications for some time." – Arkansas Historical Quarterly

From the Publisher