Paying Freedom's Price

Civil War expert Escott, professor of history at Wake Forest University, serves up a slender slice of African-American history that will whet the appetite of readers looking for an introduction to the topic. The book’s content, structure, and simple prose make clear that students are its intended audience. Escott’s argument about the agency of African-Americans in securing their freedom during the war isn’t new, but remains important. Despite any personal relationships enslaved people may have forged with slave owners, Escott states unambiguously that 'slaves hated their bondage and the coercion on which it was based.' Escott challenges persistent and unfounded assertions that enslaved African-Americans in the South willingly fought for the Confederacy. He goes on to explain why free African-Americans in the North supported the Union war effort. Escott’s discussion of black civil rights leadership is particularly illuminating and includes a fascinating discussion of the importance of education. The concluding chapter about the failure of Reconstruction is a sobering reminder of how deeply entrenched systemic racism is in the U.S. [T]here’s value in a good historical synthesis. * Publishers Weekly *
In 1860, the black population of the U.S. numbered about 4 million enslaved people in the South and about 225,000 free people in the North. Civil War expert Escott examines the ripple effects of people fleeing slavery during the war wherever they could reach Union armies. His account of the responses of generals to freedom seekers along with policy decisions by Congress and President Lincoln reflects the ways the North gradually adopted the destruction of slavery as a prerequisite to victory. Escott also illuminates the actions of African Americans, collectively in resistance on plantations as well as by migration and by enlistment as soldiers; parses the impact of the advocacy of black leaders, such as Frederick Douglass and John Rock; and considers how African Americans’ hard-won freedom was circumscribed by discrimination and reversals of progress, such as President Andrew Johnson’s revocation of General William Sherman’s redistribution of land to freed blacks. With a section of relevant documents, Escott’s history provides an accessible and informative introduction to the complexity of the American black experience during the Civil War. * Booklist *
“Paul Escott’s Paying Freedom’s Price sketches the powerful history of America’s men and women of color from the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. His concise, lucid, and richly analytical narrative chronicles the progress and pathos of African Americans’ journey from slavery to freedom. Escott supplements his insightful text by reproducing several core documents that underscore the complexity of the emancipation process. Instructors at all levels will find Paying Freedom’s Price an invaluable teaching tool, one that highlights how true freedom for persons of color proved elusive in 1865 and remains America’s foremost national challenge today.” -- John David Smith, author of Lincoln and the U.S. Colored Troops and We Ask Only for Even-Handed Justice
“Paul Escott’s seminal work, Paying Freedom's Price, captures the role that African American people played in fighting for their own freedom and northern victory during the Civil War…The scholarship that results from Escott’s work will be insightful.” -- Donna J. Benson, Professor of History, Winston-Salem State University
"Paying Freedom’s Price: A History of African Americans in the Civil War provides a powerful portrait of the multiple ways in which African Americans in both the north and the south were intimately knowledgeable about and actively engaged in the Civil War. The war, Paul Escott so eloquently demonstrates, was not simply a battle between the Confederacy and the Union or the North and South. It was the ultimate contest between enslavement and emancipation and inequality and citizenship." -- Wanda A. Hendricks, Author of Fannie Barrier Williams: Crossing The Borders Of Region And Race