Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African-American Kinship in the Civil War Era

Drawn from the work of award-winning Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland, Families and Freedom tells the story of the remaking of the black family during the tumultuous years of the Civil War era. Through the dramatic and moving letters and testimony of freed slaves, the documents in Families and Freedom provide deep insight into the most intimate aspects of the transformation of slaves to free people. This book is the sequel to the 1994 Lincoln Prize winner Free at Last, which was described in the New York Times as "this generation's most significant encounter with the American past."

A sequel to the award-winning Free at Last that includes moving letters from freed enslaved people to their families Drawn from the work of award-winning Freedmen and Southern Society Project at the University of Maryland, Families and Freedom tells the story of the remaking of the black family during the tumultuous years of the Civil War era. Through the dramatic and moving letters and testimony of freed enslaved persons, the documents in Families and Freedom provide deep insight into the most intimate aspects of the transformation of captives to free people. This book is the sequel to the 1994 Lincoln Prize winner Free at Last, which was described in the New York Times as "this generation's most significant encounter with the American past."

Ira Berlin and Leslie S. Rowland, editors of Free at Last (The New Press), teach history at the University of Maryland. They are former and present directors, respectively, of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, which is compiling a multivolume documentary history of the transition from slavery to freedom.