Illusions of Emancipation
The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery
By Joseph P. Reidy
520 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 25 halftones, notes, bibl., index
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Paperback ISBN: 978-1-4696-6156-8
Published: August 2020 -
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4696-4836-1
Published: March 2019 -
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-4837-8
Published: January 2019 -
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-7020-9
Published: January 2019
Littlefield History of the Civil War Era
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Awards & distinctions
Bancroft Prize, Columbia University
2020 John Nau Book Prize in American Civil War Era History, John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History at the University of Virginia
Finalist, 2020 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize
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.
About the Author
Joseph P. Reidy is professor emeritus of history at Howard University.
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Reviews
"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
"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
"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
"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
"[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
"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
Multimedia & Links
Watch
Reidy talks to E. Ethelbert Miller on The Scholars. (5/22/2019, running time 28:30).