Freedom: Series II: The Black Military Experience: A Documentary History of Emancipation, 1861-1867

by Ira Berlin

A collection of first-hand accounts drawn from the extensive records of the National Archives. It explains how black military service helped to destroy slavery; it is a social history of black soldiers; it explains how soldiering shaped the life of black people during and after the war.

896 pages, Hardcover

First published January 28, 1983

About the author

A historian of American slavery, Ira Berlin earned his BA in chemistry, and an MA and Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle and Federal City College in Washington, DC before moving to the University of Maryland in 1974, where he was Distinguished University Professor of History. A former president of the Organization of American Historians, Berlin was the founding editor of the Freedmen and Southern Society Project, which he directed until 1991.