This is a wonderful conversation between historians David Blight and Thavolia Glymph about the Civil War and the process of emancipation. It centers around a new book of essays edited by Blight and Jim Downs called Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation (University of Georgia Press, 2017). The essays bring together historians who took part in a recent conference on the subject at Yale.
The publisher sent me a review copy, but I have only had a chance to read about half the essays. What I have read has been very good, especially chapters by Carole Emberton, Hannah Rosen, and Jim Downs.
I can’t end this post without noting that Thavolia Glymph’s book Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household is one of the most fascinating studies about slavery that I have ever read.