Mark Grimsley has announced that Bruce Levine’s Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves During the Civil War (Oxford University Press, 2006) has been awarded the 2007 Peter Seaborg Award. This is an excellent choice for the award, which is given annually by the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. [Their website does not mention anything about the 2007 and I was unable to locate an online news item. No doubt Mark has an inside source.] Levine’s study addresses the debate in the Confederacy surrounding plans to free and arm slaves as well as why most white southerners steadfastly refused to approve the plan until close to the end of the war. The book also addresses issues of memory in connection with the continued popularity of stories purporting to demonstrate that large numbers of free and enslaved black men served in and supported the Confederate war effort.
Congratulations to Bruce Levine