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 and after Emancipation, blacks and whites interacted in ways that dramatized not only their mutual dependency, but the ambiguities and tensions that had always been latent in "the peculiar institution."

Contents

1. "The Faithful Slave"

2. Black Liberators

3. Kingdom Comin'

4. Slaves No More

5. How Free is Free?

6. The Feel of Freedom: Moving About

7. Back to Work: The Old Compulsions

8. Back to Work: The New Dependency

9. The Gospel and the Primer

10. Becoming a People