{"product_id":"forever-free-isbn-9780375702747","title":"Forever Free","description":"From one of our most distinguished historians comes a groundbreaking new examination of the myths and realities of the period after the Civil War.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDrawing on a wide range of long-neglected documents, Eric Foner places a new emphasis on black experiences and roles during the era. We see African Americans as active agents in overthrowing slavery, in shaping Reconstruction, and creating a legacy long obscured and misunderstood.  He compellingly refutes long-standing misconceptions of Reconstruction, and shows how the failures of the time sowed the seeds of the Civil Rights struggles of the 1950s and 60s.  Richly illustrated and movingly written, this is an illuminating and essential addition to our understanding of this momentous era.\u003ci\u003eForeword\u003cbr\u003eSeeing Race and Rights: A Note About the Visual Essays\u003cbr\u003ePrologue \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER ONE: \u003ci\u003eThe Peculiar Institution \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisual Essay: \u003ci\u003eTrue Likenesses \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER TWO: \u003ci\u003eForever Free \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisual Essay: \u003ci\u003eRe-visions of War \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER THREE: \u003ci\u003eThe Meanings of Freedom \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisual Essay: \u003ci\u003eAltered Relations \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER FOUR: \u003ci\u003eAn American Crisis \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER FIVE: \u003ci\u003eThe Tocsin of Freedom \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eVisual Essay: \u003ci\u003eOn the Offensive \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER SIX: \u003ci\u003eThe Facts of Reconstruction \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisual Essay: \u003ci\u003eCountersigns \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCHAPTER SEVEN: \u003ci\u003eThe Abandonment of Reconstruction \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eVisual Essay: \u003ci\u003eJim Crow \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEPILOGUE: \u003ci\u003eThe Unfinished Revolution \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBibliography for Further Reading \u003cbr\u003eBibliography for the Visual Essays \u003cbr\u003eIllustration Credits \u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments \u003cbr\u003eIndex\u003c\/i\u003e“A highly readable story of black Americans’ ongoing heroic struggle for freedom . . . Beautifully told.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e“Passionate, lucid, concise without being light. . . . Foner traces the lines of race and politics that run from Reconstruction to the age of segregation to the civil rights movement to our own time.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e“Foner delves deeply into the politics of the time, to be sure, but he spends much more time showing how political decisions affected real people. . . . This book has the potential to become a model for future history books that target a broader audience.” –\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Monthly\u003c\/i\u003e“African Americans emerge as political powerful actors in \u003ci\u003eForever Free\u003c\/i\u003e. In [these] vivid pages . . . we become acquainted with these extraordinary people, some well-known, some virtually unknown.” –\u003ci\u003eThe New Republic\u003c\/i\u003eEric Foner is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. His special area of study has been the Civil War and Reconstruction, slavery, and 19th-century America. Among his dozen books is \u003ci\u003eReconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877\u003c\/i\u003e, widely considered to be the definitive work on Reconstruction, which won the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e Book Award for History, the Bancroft Prize, and the Parkman Prize, among other honors. He served as president of the American Historical Association in 2000 and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1989. He reviews books frequently for the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Times\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eJoshua Brown is executive director of the American Social History Project\/Center for Media and Learning at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. He is the author of \u003ci\u003eBeyond the Lies\u003c\/i\u003e, a book on gilded-age America, and co-author of the interactive CD-ROMS and groundbreaking textbook (1990, 2000) \u003ci\u003eWho Built America?\u003c\/i\u003e He is also the coexecutive producer of the noted Web projects \"History Matters\" and \"The September 11 Digital Archive.\"On the evening of January 12, 1865, twenty leaders of the local black   community gathered in Savannah, Georgia, for a discussion with General   William T. Sherman and Edwin M. Stanton, the Union’s secretary of war.   The encounter took place at a pivotal moment in American history. Less   than three weeks earlier, Sherman, at the head of a sixty-thousand-man   Union army, had captured the city, completing his March to the Sea,   which cut a swath of destruction through one of the most productive   regions of the slave South. On the horizon loomed the final collapse of   the Confederacy, the irrevocable destruction of slavery, and the   turbulent postwar era known as Reconstruction. Americans, black and   white, would now have to come to terms with the war’s legacy, and   decide whether they would build an interracial democracy on the ashes   of the Old South.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    One of the most remarkable interchanges of those momentous years, the   “Colloquy” between Sherman, Stanton, and the black leaders offered a   rare lens through which the experience of slavery and the aspirations   that would help to shape Reconstruction came into sharp focus. The   meeting, which took place in the house where Sherman had established   his headquarters in Savannah, was the brainchild of Secretary Stanton,   who, the general later recalled, “seemed desirous of coming into   contact with the negroes to confer with them.” It was Sherman who   invited “the most intelligent of the negroes” of the city to the   gathering. The immediate purpose was to assist Union authorities in   devising a plan to deal with the tens of thousands of slaves who had   abandoned Georgia and South Carolina plantations and followed his army   to the city. But in its deeper significance, the discussion, conducted   in a dignified, almost solemn manner, revealed how the experience of   bondage had shaped African Americans’ ideas and hopes at the moment of   emancipation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The group that met with Sherman and Stanton, mostly Baptist and   Methodist ministers, included several men who had already achieved   prominence among Savannah’s African American population and who would   shortly assume positions of leadership in Reconstruction. Ulysses L.   Houston, who had worked as a house servant and butcher while in   slavery, had since 1861 been pastor of the city’s Third African Baptist   Church. He would go on to take part in the statewide black convention   of 1866, where representatives of the freedpeople demanded the right to   vote and equality before the law, and to serve in the state   legislature. James Porter, an Episcopal vestryman, before the war   operated a clandestine and illegal school for black children, who “kept   their secret with their studies; at home.” He would soon help to   organize the Georgia Equal Rights Association, and, like Houston,   become one of the era’s black lawmakers. James D. Lynch would rise to   prominence in Mississippi’s Reconstruction, serving as secretary of   state and winning a reputation, in the words of a white contemporary,   as “a great orator, fluid and graceful,” who “stirred the emotions” of   his black listeners “as no other man could do.” Most of the other   Colloquy participants would play major roles in the consolidation of   independent black churches, one of the signal developments of the   postwar years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    If the Colloquy looked forward to the era of Reconstruction, it also   shed light backward onto slavery. Taking place, as it were, at the dawn   of freedom, it underscored both the diversity of the black experience   under slavery and the common culture—the institutions, values, and   aspirations—that African Americans had managed to construct before the   Civil War in the face of the extraordinary repression and dislocations   visited by slavery.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The group that met with Sherman was hardly typical of all blacks. Only   5 percent of the nation’s black population was free in 1860, but five   of the twenty men who met with Sherman were freeborn, and of the   remainder, no fewer than six had obtained their liberty before the war,   either by self-purchase or through the will of a deceased owner.   Although the law forbade teaching slaves to read and write, several at   the Colloquy were literate. Houston had been taught to read by white   sailors while working in the city’s Marine Hospital. Lynch, the only   participant in the Colloquy to live in the North before the war, had   been educated at Kimball Union Academy, in New Hampshire, taught school   in Jamaica, New York, and preached for the African Methodist Episcopal   Church in Indiana prior to 1860. These were men of talent, ambition,   and standing, fully prepared for the challenges of freedom.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The conversation with Sherman and Stanton revealed that the black   leaders possessed clear conceptions of slavery and freedom. The group   chose at its spokesman Garrison Frazier, a Baptist minister who had   purchased the liberty of his wife and himself in 1856. Asked what he   understood by slavery, Frazier responded that it meant one person’s   “receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by   his consent.” Freedom he defined as “placing us where we could reap the   fruit of our own labor, and take care of ourselves”; the best way to   accomplish this was “to have land, and turn it and till it by our own   labor.” Frazier also affirmed (despite pro-slavery dogma to the   contrary) that blacks, free and slave, possessed “sufficient   intelligence” to maintain themselves in freedom and to enjoy the equal   protection of the laws. Here were the goals—the right to the fruits of   one’s labor, access to land, equal rights as citizens—that would   animate black politics during and after Reconstruction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Despite Frazier’s optimism about blacks’ capacity to take full   advantage of emancipation, slavery cast a long shadow over the   discussion. Asked whether blacks preferred to live in communities of   their own or “scattered among the whites,” he replied: “I would prefer   to live by ourselves, for there is a prejudice against us in the South   that will take years to get over.” (On this point alone, disagreement   followed, for Lynch insisted it would be best for the races to live   together; all the others, however, agreed with Frazier.) At the same   time, Frazier affirmed the loyalty of African Americans, free and   slave, to the federal government. “If the prayers that have gone up for   the Union army could be read out,” he added, “you would not get through   them these two weeks.” As for Sherman himself, Frazier remarked that   blacks viewed him as a man “specially set apart by God” to “accomplish   this work” of emancipation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By the time of the Savannah Colloquy, slavery was an old institution in   America. Two and a half centuries had passed since the first African   Americans set foot in Britain’s mainland colonies. Before the American   Revolution, slavery existed in all the colonies, and in Spanish Florida   and French Louisiana, areas subsequently absorbed into the United   States. Slavery is as old as human civilization itself. It was central   to the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. After dying out in   northern Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire, it persisted in   the Mediterranean world, where a slave trade in Slavic peoples survived   into the fifteenth century. (The English word slavery derives from   Slav.) Slavery in Africa long predated the coming of Europeans and the   opening of the mammoth transatlantic slave trade in the sixteenth   century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The slave system that arose in the western hemisphere differed in   significant ways from others that preceded it. Traditionally, Africans   enslaved on their own continent tended to be criminals, debtors, and   captives in war. They worked within the households of their owners and   had well-defined rights, such as possessing property and marrying free   persons. It was not uncommon for slaves in Africa to acquire their   freedom. Slavery was one of several forms of labor, not the basis of   the overall economy as it would become in large parts of the New World.   In the western hemisphere, by contrast, slavery centered on the   plantation system, in which large concentrations of slave laborers   under the control of a single owner produced goods—sugar, tobacco,   rice, and cotton—for the world market. The fact that slaves greatly   outnumbered whites in plantation regions magnified the prospects for   resistance and made it necessary to police the system rigidly. Labor on   slave plantations was far more demanding than in household slavery, and   the death rate among slaves much higher. And New World slavery was a   racial system. Unlike in the ancient world or Africa, slaves who   managed to become free remained distinct because of their color, a mark   of bondage and a visible sign of being considered unworthy of   incorporation as equals into free society.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Slavery proved indispensable to the settlement and development of the   New World. Of the approximately 12.5 million persons who crossed the   Atlantic to live in the western hemisphere between 1500 and 1820,   perhaps 10 million were African slaves. The Atlantic slave trade, which   flourished from 1500 into the nineteenth century, was a regularized   business in which European merchants, African traders, and American   planters engaged in a complex and profitable bargaining over human   lives. Most Africans were shipped in inhuman conditions. “The height,   sometimes, between decks,” wrote one slave trader, “was only 18 inches,   so that the unfortunate human beings could not turn around, or even on   their sides . . . and here they are usually chained to the decks by   their necks and legs.” Olaudah Equiano, the eleven-year-old son of a   West African village chief, kidnapped by slave traders in the 1750s,   later wrote a widely read account of his experiences, in which he   described “the shrieks of the women and the groans of the dying” on the   ship that carried him to slavery in Barbados. Disease spread rapidly on   slave ships; sometimes the ill were thrown overboard to prevent   epidemics. The colonies that became the United States attracted a   higher percentage of free immigrants than other parts of the New World.   Even here, however, of some 800,000 arrivals between 1607 and 1770,   more than 300,000 were slaves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The first mass consumer goods in international trade were produced by   slaves—sugar, rice, coffee, and tobacco. The rising demand for these   products fueled the rapid growth of the Atlantic slave trade. The   profits from slavery stimulated the rise of British ports such as   Liverpool and Bristol, and the growth of banking, shipbuilding, and   insurance, and helped to finance the early industrial revolution. The   centrality of slavery to the economy of the British empire encouraged   an ever-closer identification of freedom with whites and slavery with   blacks. This is not to say that all whites enjoyed equality. Many   gradations of freedom coexisted in colonial America. The majority of   English settlers who crossed the Atlantic in the seventeenth and   eighteenth centuries came as indentured servants who agreed to labor   for a period of years in exchange for passage. Even after their term of   labor ended, many remained poor, landless, and unable to meet the   property qualifications for voting.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Slavery and ideas about innate racial difference developed slowly in   seventeenth-century America. Some early black arrivals were apparently   treated as servants rather than slaves, and gained their freedom after   a fixed term of labor. Not until the 1660s did the laws of Virginia and   Maryland explicitly refer to slavery. As tobacco planting spread and   the demand\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    for labor increased, however, the condition of black and white servants   diverged sharply. “Race”—the idea that humanity is divided into   well-defined groups associated with skin color—is a modern concept that   had not fully developed in the seventeenth century. Nor had “racism”—an   ideology based on the belief that some races are inherently superior to   others and entitled to rule over them. But as slavery became more and   more central to the colonial economy, views of race hardened. In 1762,   the Quaker abolitionist John Woolman commented on the strength of “the   idea of slavery being connected with the black color, and liberty with   the white.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    By the mid-eighteenth century, slaves accounted for nearly half of   Virginia’s population. Virginia had changed from a “society with   slaves,” in which slavery was one system of labor among others, to a   “slave society,” where the institution stood at the center of the   economic process. Slavery formed the basis of the economy, and the   foundation of a powerful local ruling class, in the entire region from   Maryland south to Georgia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Slavery also existed in the middle and northern colonies, although   there, slaves generally worked on small farms or in their owners’ homes   or shops rather than on large plantations. Nonetheless, in 1746, New   York City’s 2,440 slaves comprised one-fifth of its total population.   Among cities on the North American continent, only Charleston and New   Orleans counted more slaves than New York. As immigration from Europe   increased, the proportion of slaves in the workforce outside the   southern colonies declined. But areas where slavery was only a minor   institution still profited from slave labor. Merchants in New York,   Massachusetts, and Rhode Island participated actively in the slave   trade, shipping slaves from Africa to the Caribbean or the South. Much   of the grain, fish, and livestock exported from Pennsylvania and other   northern colonies was destined for the slave plantations of the West   Indies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The colonial era witnessed the simultaneous expansion of freedom and   slavery in Britain’s Atlantic empire. These were the years when the   idea of the “freeborn Englishman” became powerfully entrenched in the   outlook of both colonists and Britons. Yet the eighteenth century was   also the great era of the Atlantic slave trade, a commerce increasingly   dominated by British merchants and ships. During that century more than   half the Africans shipped to the New World as slaves were carried on   British vessels.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The American Revolution threw the future of slavery into doubt. When   Thomas Jefferson in 1776 proclaimed mankind’s inalienable right to   liberty, and he and other leaders of the new nation spoke of the United   States as an asylum of freedom for the oppressed peoples of the world,   one American in five was a black slave (including more than one hundred   owned by Jefferson himself). The same colonial newspapers that carried   arguments against British policies and accounts of resistance to   British tyranny also printed advertisements for the sale of slaves. The   Revolution did, however, make slavery for the first time a matter of   widespread public debate. It inspired charges of hypocrisy, not only   from British opponents of independence but also within America. How   strong, wondered Abigail Adams, could the “passion for liberty” be   among those “accustomed to deprive their fellow citizens of theirs”?   But the Revolution also inspired hopes that the institution of slavery   could be eliminated from American life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The language of liberty echoed in slave communities, North and South.   The first concrete steps toward emancipation in the North were “freedom   petitions”—arguments for emancipation presented to New England’s courts   by slaves who claimed the rhetoric of liberty for themselves. In 1776,   Lemuel Haynes, a black minister who served in the Massachusetts militia   during the War of Independence, penned an antislavery essay. If liberty   were truly “an innate principle” for all mankind,” Haynes wrote, “even   an African [had] as equally good a right to his liberty in common with   Englishmen.” The British offered freedom to slaves who joined the royal   cause, and nearly one hundred thousand deserted their owners; twenty   thousand of them accompanied the British out of the country at the end   of the war—to Europe, Canada, Africa, and, in some cases, reenslavement   in the West Indies. Perhaps five thousand escaped bondage by enlisting   in the Revolutionary army or local American militias.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305216987365,"sku":"NP9780375702747","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780375702747.jpg?v=1767727569","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/forever-free-isbn-9780375702747","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}