Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award Based on hitherto unexamined sources: interviews with ex-slaves, diaries and accounts by former slaveholders, this "rich and admirably written book" (Eugene Genovese, The New York Times Book Review) aims to show how, during the Civil War an...
“With us, the death of slavery is recognized,” affirmed a South Carolina Unionist and former slaveholder, “but we don’t believe that because the nigger is free he ought to be saucy; and we don’t mean to have any such nonsense as letting him vote. He’s helpless and ignorant, and dependent, and the...