Nothing But Freedom

Emancipation and Its Legacy

Eric Foner

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN:
  9780807132890
• eBook ISBN:
  9780807144961
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

Nothing But Freedom examines the aftermath of emancipation in the South and the restructuring of society by which the former slaves gained, beyond their freedom, a new relation to the land they worked on, to the men they worked for, and to the government they lived under. Taking a comparative approach, Eric Foner examines Reconstruction in the southern states against the experience of Haiti, where a violent slave revolt was followed by the establishment of an undemocratic government and the imposition of a system of forced labor; the British Caribbean, where the colonial government oversaw an orderly transition from slavery to the creation of an almost totally dependent work force; and early twentieth-century southern and eastern Africa, where a self-sufficient peasantry was dispossessed in order to create a dependent black work force. Measuring the progress of freedmen in the post--Civil War South against that of freedmen in other recently emancipated societies, Foner reveals Reconstruction to have been, despite its failings, a unique and dramatic experiment in interracial democracy in the aftermath of slavery. Steven Hahn's timely new foreword places Foner's analysis in the context of recent scholarship and assesses its enduring impact in the twenty-first century.

INDEX

Abolitionists: in England, 29

in U.S., 41–42

Abram, Cyrus, 66

Adamson, Alan, 26

Africa: peasantry in, 31–32, 35, 118n

capitalism in, 31

taxation in, 32

labor and class relations in, 31–32, 116n

expropriation of land in, 31, 33–34

racism in, 33, 116n

political power in, 46

compared to U.S., 3, 72

Afrikaaners, 32

Aiken, D. Wyatt, 106

Alabama: Black convention in, 56

fence laws in, 64

Alabama and Chattanooga Railroad, 48

Alexander II, Czar of Russia, 9

All God’s Dangers, 64

Allston, Adele, 84

Allston, Benjamin, 84

Allston, Robert F. W., 77

American Historical Review, 6, 111n

Ames, Adelbert, 52

Angola, 118n

Antigua, 14, 17

Apartheid, 33

Appling v. Odum, 61

Apprenticeship: in British Caribbean, 16–18, 28–29

in Africa, 33

in U.S., 50–51

Ashepoo River, 74, 90, 92

Asian forced labor, 16

Atkinson, Edward, 42

Barbados, 14, 17, 19, 23

Beaufort, S.C., 75, 77, 98–99, 108

Bissell, J. B., 91, 93, 97, 100, 102, 105, 131n

Black Act, 65

Black Codes: in British Caribbean, 17, 24

in U.S., 49, 52, 54, 59, 66

Black Reconstruction in America, 6

Boutwell, George S., 48

Bowers, Edward, 94

Boyer, Jean-Pierre, 12

Brazil, 2

British Caribbean: emancipation in, 1, 14, 23, 39, 57, 72

class relations in, 3, 4

political power in, 3, 15, 26–27, 45–46

plantations in 14–15, 19–20

sugar production in, 14, 21, 26, 29

apprenticeship in, 16–18

Black codes in, 17, 24

family in, 19

peasantry in, 17–18, 20–21, 28, 34, 36

Colonial Office in, 17, 27–29

immigration of labor to, 21, 23, 47

Chinese labor in, 22–23

provision grounds in, 18, 55

racism in, 3...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I The Anatomy of Emancipation
• II The Politics of Freedom
• III The Emancipated Worker
• Notes
• Index
• Footnotes