{"product_id":"troubled-refuge-struggling-for-freedom-in-the-civil-war-9780307271204","title":"Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom the author of What This Cruel War Was Over  a vivid portrait of the Union armys escaped-slave refugee camps and how they shaped the course of emancipation and citizenship in the United States.  Even before shots were fired at Fort Sumter  slaves recognized that their bondage was at the root of the war they knew was coming  and they began running to the Union army. By the wars end  nearly half a million had taken refuge behind Union lines in improvised contraband camps. These were crowded and dangerous places  with conditions approaching those of a humanitarian crisis. Yet families and individualssome 12 to 15 percent of the Confederacys slave populationtook unimaginable risks to reach them  and they became the first places where many Northerners would come to know former slaves en masse  with reverberating consequences for emancipation  its progress  and the Reconstruction that followed.  Drawing on records of the Union and Confederate armies  the letters and diaries of soldiers  transcribed testimonies of former slaves  and more  Chandra Manning allows us to accompany the black men  women  and children who sought out the Union army in hopes of achieving autonomy for themselves and their communities. Ranging from the stories of individuals to those of armies on the move to debates in the halls of Congress  Troubled Refuge probes the particular and deeply significant reality of the contraband camps: what they were really like and how former slaves and Union soldiers warily united there  forging a dramatically new but highly imperfect alliance between the government and African Americans. That alliance  which would outlast the war  helped destroy slavery and warded off the very acute and surprisingly tenacious danger of re-enslavement. It also raised  for the first time  humanitarian questions about refugees in wartime and legal questions about civil and military authority with which we still wrestle  as well as redefined American citizenship  to the benefit but also to the lasting cost of African Americans.  Integrating a wealth of new findings  Manningcasts in wholly original light what it was like to escape slavery  how emancipation happened  and how citizenship in the United States was transformed. This reshaping of hard structures of power would matter not only for slaves turned citizens  but for all Americans.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45658875199541,"sku":"ByrdShop_030727120X","price":21.05,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780307271204.jpg?v=1782137356","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/troubled-refuge-struggling-for-freedom-in-the-civil-war-9780307271204","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}