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Freedom Soldiers examines the lives of formerly enslaved men who deserted the US Army during the Civil War and their experiences in army camps, courts, and prisons. It explores their reasons for leaving, often through their own voices from courts-martial testimony.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Part I: Freedom in Camp
- Chapter 1 "Bound for Freedom's Light": Emancipating Men in the Army
- Chapter 2 "Parts of the Gigantic Machine of Death": Reacting to Army Discipline
- Chapter 3 "No Intention of Deserting": Taking Leaves of Freedom
- Part II: Freedom in the Military Justice System
- Chapter 4 Unworthy of Freedom": Policing Emancipation in the Courts-Martial
- Chapter 5 "Establish My Innocence": Defending Freedom in the Courts-Martial
- Chapter 6 "Ought Not to Be in Prison": Petitioning for Freedom
- Conclusion
- Acknowledgments
- Appendix
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
About the author
Jonathan Lande is an assistant professor of history at Purdue University. His work has received numerous awards, including the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians and the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation Dissertation Prize from the American Society for Legal History.
Summary
Freedom Soldiers examines the lives of formerly enslaved men who deserted the US Army during the Civil War and their experiences in army camps, courts, and prisons. It explores their reasons for leaving, often through their own voices from courts-martial testimony.
Additional text
Freedom Soldiers draws on a terrific array of sources to reveal Black Union soldiers as enlisted freedom-seekers whose flight from slavery did not end in the ranks of the Union Army, but rather continued as they contested the terms of their employment and challenged strictures that impeded their sense of what freedom should mean. Jonathan Lande engages scholarly conversations about wartime emancipation, desertion, and labor history and tells us something new about each. Lande brings Black Union soldiers alive, not as unidimensional tropes, but as fathers, siblings, husbands, dreamers, protestors, friends, advocates.
