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Civil War America
Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps
The Civil War was just days old when the first enslaved men, women, and children began fleeing their plantations to seek refuge inside the lines of the Union army as it moved deep into the heart of the Confederacy. In the years that followed, hundreds of thousands more followed in a mass exodus from slavery that would destroy the system once and for all. Drawing on an extraordinary survey of slave refugee camps throughout the country, Embattled Freedom reveals as never before the everyday experiences of these refugees from slavery as they made their way through the vast landscape of army-supervised camps that emerged during the war. Amy Murrell Taylor vividly reconstructs the human world of wartime emancipation, taking readers inside military-issued tents and makeshift towns, through commissary warehouses and active combat, and into the realities of individuals and families struggling to survive physically as well as spiritually. Narrating their journeys in and out of the confines of the camps, Taylor shows in often gripping detail how the most basic necessities of life were elemental to a former slave's quest for freedom and full citizenship.
The stories of individuals--storekeepers, a laundress, and a minister among them--anchor this ambitious and wide-ranging history and demonstrate with new clarity how contingent the slaves' pursuit of freedom was on the rhythms and culture of military life. Taylor brings new insight into the enormous risks taken by formerly enslaved people to find freedom in the midst of the nation's most destructive war.
The stories of individuals--storekeepers, a laundress, and a minister among them--anchor this ambitious and wide-ranging history and demonstrate with new clarity how contingent the slaves' pursuit of freedom was on the rhythms and culture of military life. Taylor brings new insight into the enormous risks taken by formerly enslaved people to find freedom in the midst of the nation's most destructive war.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published November 26, 2018
32 people are currently reading
280 people want to read
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November 29, 2023
4.5 need to revisit this more thoroughly
December 26, 2021
Amy Murrell Taylor’s Embattled Freedom seeks to give a voice to enslaved African Americans in the Civil War who were refugees. Taylor focuses on three people who help illustrate the refugees’ struggle. Using a micro-historical approach, she seeks to humanize refugees presenting their particular struggles as a historical minority.
The research that went into Embattled Freedom is evident from the beginning of the book. Taylor takes the reader through the refugees’ journey. She shows the Union army was not the saving grace for enslaved, and escape from the plantation did not equal freedom. The layout of the book has three different arcs. The arcs are told through three different perspectives and locations, giving voice to the group of Civil War refugees as a whole. The term refugee is an interesting one; it humanizes enslaved people.
Amy Taylor touches on all aspects of refugees’ lives from marriage to clothing to religion. The fact of religion being the least regulated part of refugees’ lives was an interesting one. One would think to ‘civilize’ newly freed African Americans religion would be the main way. Obviously, basic needs took priority, but after that Protestant Christianity was next. Taylor shows the reader that religion and education went hand in hand. She also points out that many refugees were already educated before they came into the camps. Whether it was from clandestine learning when enslaved or self-taught education, many refugees could read, write, and spell before entering the camps.
Clothing as a source of social power is an interesting notion. The idea of “clothing [as] an important, visible marker of status and social position” shows that some things in human nature do not change. Refugees who gained new clothing were seen as shedding their life of enslavement and stepping into freedom. Women’s clothing especially displayed social freedom. Women’s clothing were “barometers of social change.” Yet clothing shows the social status of African American women were still less than their white counterparts. As US Sanitary Commission agent Maria Mann noted that refugee women, unlike white women, were not allowed to wear full skirts. The skirts issue shows that African American women were still at the bottom of the social ranking.
Removal from refugee camps and separation of black families shows the reader security did not come from being in a camp. The idea of refugee isolation helping to prevent fraternization between black women and white men was overall ridiculous. As Taylor writes “proximity had always been associated with army protection.” The separation of refugees from the main army was tricky. Taylor shows readers that the execution of separation did not work well. The Mississippi River islands did not provide refugees with proper shelter, landscapes, or economic opportunities. It was a quick solution that did not work.
Taylor points out that there were over 200 refugee camps in the occupied South with over “half a million people” taking up residence in these spaces. The tragedy of these spaces being so easily reduced to nothing on the physical landscape and history books is enormous. For refugees, the loss of camps was akin to losing all sense of freedom again. Everything built since their freedom was being destroyed and taken away from them. One has to wonder at the psychological effects of it all on the refugees. The resettlement process would have been very traumatic.
I appreciate Taylor’s emphasis on how finding Union lines did not mean the refugees were completely free. Freedom was something those in bondage would have to fight their way out of through various means. In the different chapters, Taylor shows that the enslaved living how they wanted to was a form of freedom and resistance. The snippets of African American marriage and family point back to the struggles Tera Hunter’s Bound in Wedlock outlined. The idea of enslaved marriages being less than because it was not officiated by white preachers or recognized by the federal government comes up in this book.
Amy Taylor adds to the historiography of the Civil War with her emphasis on the escaped enslaved in the South. Taylor’s work should be read in American schools. Embattled Freedom shows freedom did not occur when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Freedom was something hard-fought by African Americans, not only physically but mentally. The Civil War may have started the path to freedom, but it illustrates that safety and security did not come with freedom.
The research that went into Embattled Freedom is evident from the beginning of the book. Taylor takes the reader through the refugees’ journey. She shows the Union army was not the saving grace for enslaved, and escape from the plantation did not equal freedom. The layout of the book has three different arcs. The arcs are told through three different perspectives and locations, giving voice to the group of Civil War refugees as a whole. The term refugee is an interesting one; it humanizes enslaved people.
Amy Taylor touches on all aspects of refugees’ lives from marriage to clothing to religion. The fact of religion being the least regulated part of refugees’ lives was an interesting one. One would think to ‘civilize’ newly freed African Americans religion would be the main way. Obviously, basic needs took priority, but after that Protestant Christianity was next. Taylor shows the reader that religion and education went hand in hand. She also points out that many refugees were already educated before they came into the camps. Whether it was from clandestine learning when enslaved or self-taught education, many refugees could read, write, and spell before entering the camps.
Clothing as a source of social power is an interesting notion. The idea of “clothing [as] an important, visible marker of status and social position” shows that some things in human nature do not change. Refugees who gained new clothing were seen as shedding their life of enslavement and stepping into freedom. Women’s clothing especially displayed social freedom. Women’s clothing were “barometers of social change.” Yet clothing shows the social status of African American women were still less than their white counterparts. As US Sanitary Commission agent Maria Mann noted that refugee women, unlike white women, were not allowed to wear full skirts. The skirts issue shows that African American women were still at the bottom of the social ranking.
Removal from refugee camps and separation of black families shows the reader security did not come from being in a camp. The idea of refugee isolation helping to prevent fraternization between black women and white men was overall ridiculous. As Taylor writes “proximity had always been associated with army protection.” The separation of refugees from the main army was tricky. Taylor shows readers that the execution of separation did not work well. The Mississippi River islands did not provide refugees with proper shelter, landscapes, or economic opportunities. It was a quick solution that did not work.
Taylor points out that there were over 200 refugee camps in the occupied South with over “half a million people” taking up residence in these spaces. The tragedy of these spaces being so easily reduced to nothing on the physical landscape and history books is enormous. For refugees, the loss of camps was akin to losing all sense of freedom again. Everything built since their freedom was being destroyed and taken away from them. One has to wonder at the psychological effects of it all on the refugees. The resettlement process would have been very traumatic.
I appreciate Taylor’s emphasis on how finding Union lines did not mean the refugees were completely free. Freedom was something those in bondage would have to fight their way out of through various means. In the different chapters, Taylor shows that the enslaved living how they wanted to was a form of freedom and resistance. The snippets of African American marriage and family point back to the struggles Tera Hunter’s Bound in Wedlock outlined. The idea of enslaved marriages being less than because it was not officiated by white preachers or recognized by the federal government comes up in this book.
Amy Taylor adds to the historiography of the Civil War with her emphasis on the escaped enslaved in the South. Taylor’s work should be read in American schools. Embattled Freedom shows freedom did not occur when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued. Freedom was something hard-fought by African Americans, not only physically but mentally. The Civil War may have started the path to freedom, but it illustrates that safety and security did not come with freedom.
June 25, 2019
From the start of the Civil War, enslaved African Americans sensed the opportunity for freedom as Union forces seized territory at the outer margins of seceded states. Initially, there was the odd phenomenon of officers in blue uniforms turning over escapees to their slave masters. But all that changed in 1861 at Fort Monroe, at the southern tip of the Virginia Peninsula, when the famously chameleonlike General Benjamin Butler refused to return the three enslaved men who fled to his lines. Butler himself, at least at this stage of his life, could care less about blacks, slave or free, but reasoning that the Fugitive Slave Act no longer applied to the seceded states, and observing that every enslaved person serving as support behind Confederate lines freed up a white soldier to fire upon Union ranks, Butler ruled that such escapees be treated as “contrabands” of war and confiscated. Contraband was an unfortunate term that equated the enslaved with property instead of people, but it nevertheless stuck—but then so too did Butler’s policy, which only a few months later was enshrined by Congress in the Confiscation Act of 1861.
What began as a trickle to Butler’s fort turned into a veritable flood that eventually was to bring something like a half-million formerly enslaved people to seek shelter with the Union army over the next four years. About one-fifth of these would later serve, often heroically, as soldiers in the United States Colored Troops (USCT), but what about the other roughly four hundred thousand? What became of them? If their fate never occurred to you before, it is because the story of this huge, largely anonymous population has remained conspicuous in its absence in much of the vast historiography of the Civil War—at least until Amy Murrell Taylor’s brilliant, groundbreaking recent book, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps.
Fleeing to Union lines was only possible if the army was in your vicinity, which put this option out of reach to much of the south’s enslaved population. That approximately one-seventh of the Confederacy’s enslaved population of 3.5 million fled to the surmised safety of Union lines when this limited opportunity knocked gives lie to the notion that the “peculiar institution” was benign and that the majority of the enslaved were satisfied with their lot—a sadly resurgent fiction promoted by “Lost Cause” apologists that has again found an unfortunate home within contemporary political discourse. These 500,000 men, women and children—and yes, Taylor learned, there were indeed significant numbers of children—were of course not “contrabands” but refugees, as that term was understood both then and now. And they fled, usually in great peril, with little more than the rags on their backs, to what may have been a promise of freedom but also an unknown future fraught with difficulty.
What would become of them? It turns out that rather than a single shared outcome there was a variety of experiences that depended upon geography, the fortunes of war, and the arbitrary rule of local commanders. Neither the Union army nor the civilian north was prepared for the phenomenon of hundreds of thousands of black refugees, and the result was often not favorable to those who were the most vulnerable. At the dawn of the war, abolitionists still comprised only a tiny minority in the United States. Most of the north remained deeply racist, and those championing “free soil” generally had little concern for the welfare of African Americans on either side of the Mason-Dixon line. This reality informed policy, which even when well-intentioned tended to be patronizing, and was in fact frequently ignored. Embattled Freedom describes how orders were issued mandating both payments and provisions for refugees, who if physically capable were expected to provide the kind of support to the army as paid laborers that they might otherwise have given to the Confederate effort as slaves. But in practice, they were rarely paid, their wages euphemistically diverted to the “general welfare,” or simply stolen by dishonest opportunists. And military necessity trumped all: there was a war on, blood was being shed, and the existential future of the nation was at stake. Refugees would ever remain a lower priority, at the mercy of the corrupt or the indifferent. Rarely consulted, decisions were made for them that often proved less than ideal. The author treats us to a number of examples of this, but perhaps the most ironic is the campaign by well-meaning missionaries to equip refugee shelters with windows, when their occupants assiduously eschewed these for the sake of privacy and security.
Then there was the case of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the enslaved in Confederate-controlled territory, but paradoxically did not apply to areas controlled by the Union army. Only a rather obscure directive that would cashier any soldier returning a person to slavery served as an unlikely safety-net for refugees. More significantly, there was the border state of Kentucky, which when it opted not to join the Confederacy became the largest slave state in the Union, something that endured until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, well beyond the end of the war. Refugee camps in Kentucky were ringed by slaveowners; wandering outside of camp could result in capture and enslavement that could be nearly impossible to dispute by a black person in a state where slavery was both legal and widespread.
Refugees ever lived at risk elsewhere in what can only be described as uncertain sanctuaries. Camps evolved into “freedman’s villages”—replete with churches, schools, stores and tidy public squares—that sprang up at the edges of Confederate territory occupied by Union troops, but long-term security was tenuous, dependent entirely on these garrisons. If the army was redeployed, refugees were suddenly thrust into great danger and forced to flee once more lest they be captured and returned to slavery by roving bands of locals. It is well documented that Confederates habitually executed USCT troops wounded or seeking surrender. Less familiar perhaps was the devastation visited upon these undefended villages by rebels and their partisan allies enraged at the formerly enslaved living in freedom in their midst. Hunger often accompanied the refugee, even in the best of circumstances; a camp or village razed and burned could portend starvation.
The end of the war and abolition seemed to suggest a new beginning, but optimism was short-lived. Lincoln’s untimely death sent Andrew Johnson to the White House. The new president was deeply hostile to African Americans, and ensuing years saw pardons issued to former CSA political and military elites, property returned to once dislodged slave masters, and refugees terrorized and murdered, ultimately driven off the lands that once hosted thriving freedman’s villages. Where can you see a freedman’s village today? You can’t: they were all plowed under, sometimes along with the bones of occupants less than willing to be displaced.
Embattled Freedom is an especially valuable resource because it contains not only a panoramic view of the refugee experience but an expertly narrowed lens that zooms in upon a handful of individuals that Taylor’s careful research has redeemed from obscurity. Especially fascinating is the saga of Edward and Emma Whitehurst, an enslaved couple that had managed over time to stockpile a surprisingly large savings through Edward’s side work, in a unique arrangement with his owner. Fleeing slavery, the entrepreneurial Whitehurst’s turned their nest egg into a highly successful and profitable store at a refugee camp in Virginia—only to one day lose it all to retreating Union forces desperate for supplies. There is also the inspiring story of Eliza Bogan of Helena, Arkansas, who as refugee leaves the harsh existence of picking cotton behind only to endure one obstacle after another in her pursuit of life as a free woman in uncertain circumstances. There are other stories, as well. These personal studies not only enrich a well-written narrative, but ever engage the reader well beyond the typical scholarly work.
A week after I finished reading Embattled Freedom, I sat in the audience during Amy Taylor’s presentation at the Civil War Institute Summer Conference 2019 at Gettysburg College, which highlighted both her passion and her scholarship. During the Q&A, I asked what surprised her most during her research. Hard-pressed to answer, she finally settled on the number of children that turned up in the refugee population. I would suggest that as a topic for her next book. In the meantime, drop everything and read Embattled Freedom. You will not regret it.
Review of: Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps, by Amy Murrell Taylor https://regarp.com/2019/06/25/review-...
What began as a trickle to Butler’s fort turned into a veritable flood that eventually was to bring something like a half-million formerly enslaved people to seek shelter with the Union army over the next four years. About one-fifth of these would later serve, often heroically, as soldiers in the United States Colored Troops (USCT), but what about the other roughly four hundred thousand? What became of them? If their fate never occurred to you before, it is because the story of this huge, largely anonymous population has remained conspicuous in its absence in much of the vast historiography of the Civil War—at least until Amy Murrell Taylor’s brilliant, groundbreaking recent book, Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps.
Fleeing to Union lines was only possible if the army was in your vicinity, which put this option out of reach to much of the south’s enslaved population. That approximately one-seventh of the Confederacy’s enslaved population of 3.5 million fled to the surmised safety of Union lines when this limited opportunity knocked gives lie to the notion that the “peculiar institution” was benign and that the majority of the enslaved were satisfied with their lot—a sadly resurgent fiction promoted by “Lost Cause” apologists that has again found an unfortunate home within contemporary political discourse. These 500,000 men, women and children—and yes, Taylor learned, there were indeed significant numbers of children—were of course not “contrabands” but refugees, as that term was understood both then and now. And they fled, usually in great peril, with little more than the rags on their backs, to what may have been a promise of freedom but also an unknown future fraught with difficulty.
What would become of them? It turns out that rather than a single shared outcome there was a variety of experiences that depended upon geography, the fortunes of war, and the arbitrary rule of local commanders. Neither the Union army nor the civilian north was prepared for the phenomenon of hundreds of thousands of black refugees, and the result was often not favorable to those who were the most vulnerable. At the dawn of the war, abolitionists still comprised only a tiny minority in the United States. Most of the north remained deeply racist, and those championing “free soil” generally had little concern for the welfare of African Americans on either side of the Mason-Dixon line. This reality informed policy, which even when well-intentioned tended to be patronizing, and was in fact frequently ignored. Embattled Freedom describes how orders were issued mandating both payments and provisions for refugees, who if physically capable were expected to provide the kind of support to the army as paid laborers that they might otherwise have given to the Confederate effort as slaves. But in practice, they were rarely paid, their wages euphemistically diverted to the “general welfare,” or simply stolen by dishonest opportunists. And military necessity trumped all: there was a war on, blood was being shed, and the existential future of the nation was at stake. Refugees would ever remain a lower priority, at the mercy of the corrupt or the indifferent. Rarely consulted, decisions were made for them that often proved less than ideal. The author treats us to a number of examples of this, but perhaps the most ironic is the campaign by well-meaning missionaries to equip refugee shelters with windows, when their occupants assiduously eschewed these for the sake of privacy and security.
Then there was the case of the Emancipation Proclamation, which freed the enslaved in Confederate-controlled territory, but paradoxically did not apply to areas controlled by the Union army. Only a rather obscure directive that would cashier any soldier returning a person to slavery served as an unlikely safety-net for refugees. More significantly, there was the border state of Kentucky, which when it opted not to join the Confederacy became the largest slave state in the Union, something that endured until the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified, well beyond the end of the war. Refugee camps in Kentucky were ringed by slaveowners; wandering outside of camp could result in capture and enslavement that could be nearly impossible to dispute by a black person in a state where slavery was both legal and widespread.
Refugees ever lived at risk elsewhere in what can only be described as uncertain sanctuaries. Camps evolved into “freedman’s villages”—replete with churches, schools, stores and tidy public squares—that sprang up at the edges of Confederate territory occupied by Union troops, but long-term security was tenuous, dependent entirely on these garrisons. If the army was redeployed, refugees were suddenly thrust into great danger and forced to flee once more lest they be captured and returned to slavery by roving bands of locals. It is well documented that Confederates habitually executed USCT troops wounded or seeking surrender. Less familiar perhaps was the devastation visited upon these undefended villages by rebels and their partisan allies enraged at the formerly enslaved living in freedom in their midst. Hunger often accompanied the refugee, even in the best of circumstances; a camp or village razed and burned could portend starvation.
The end of the war and abolition seemed to suggest a new beginning, but optimism was short-lived. Lincoln’s untimely death sent Andrew Johnson to the White House. The new president was deeply hostile to African Americans, and ensuing years saw pardons issued to former CSA political and military elites, property returned to once dislodged slave masters, and refugees terrorized and murdered, ultimately driven off the lands that once hosted thriving freedman’s villages. Where can you see a freedman’s village today? You can’t: they were all plowed under, sometimes along with the bones of occupants less than willing to be displaced.
Embattled Freedom is an especially valuable resource because it contains not only a panoramic view of the refugee experience but an expertly narrowed lens that zooms in upon a handful of individuals that Taylor’s careful research has redeemed from obscurity. Especially fascinating is the saga of Edward and Emma Whitehurst, an enslaved couple that had managed over time to stockpile a surprisingly large savings through Edward’s side work, in a unique arrangement with his owner. Fleeing slavery, the entrepreneurial Whitehurst’s turned their nest egg into a highly successful and profitable store at a refugee camp in Virginia—only to one day lose it all to retreating Union forces desperate for supplies. There is also the inspiring story of Eliza Bogan of Helena, Arkansas, who as refugee leaves the harsh existence of picking cotton behind only to endure one obstacle after another in her pursuit of life as a free woman in uncertain circumstances. There are other stories, as well. These personal studies not only enrich a well-written narrative, but ever engage the reader well beyond the typical scholarly work.
A week after I finished reading Embattled Freedom, I sat in the audience during Amy Taylor’s presentation at the Civil War Institute Summer Conference 2019 at Gettysburg College, which highlighted both her passion and her scholarship. During the Q&A, I asked what surprised her most during her research. Hard-pressed to answer, she finally settled on the number of children that turned up in the refugee population. I would suggest that as a topic for her next book. In the meantime, drop everything and read Embattled Freedom. You will not regret it.
Review of: Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War’s Slave Refugee Camps, by Amy Murrell Taylor https://regarp.com/2019/06/25/review-...
February 9, 2020
Devastating.
February 22, 2022
In her book Embattled Freedom: Journeys through the Civil War's Refugee Camps, Amy Murrell Taylor intends to showcase the everyday lives of the hundreds of thousands of ex-slaves that occupied the refugee camps, or contraband camps, found within the Union-occupied territories of the Confederacy during the Civil War. This book does a great job of covering the topic in a way that is both interesting and easy to digest. If you're looking for a place to start, I would suggest starting with this book and then moving elsewhere using the notes provided at the end of the book.
In the introduction, Taylor set out what she wanted the book to do for the topic. Embattled Freedom is an act of recovery for the lost stories of refugees, "the story of what it meant to search for freedom in the middle of a war" (8), an example of the "'long emancipation from slavery" (8), a pullback from politics, and a zoom-in on the "material reality [and physical needs] of the camps" (12). As put by Taylor, the book is meant to answer "Who exactly were the refugees? Where did they come from? And what did they experience" (15). To answer these questions, she frames her narrative using three different experiences that all come together to exemplify life as a refugee.
Immediately after her introduction, Taylor dives into setting up her narrative. She centered it around three different stories from three different people(s): Edward and Emma Whitehurst, two storekeepers; Eliza Bogan, a laundress; and Gabriel Burdett, a minister. By using these three as examples, Taylor exemplified the struggles of refugees during the Civil War. Through the Whitehursts, Taylor showcased the experience of securing work, and how that work benefitted the Union and how it intersected with refugee efforts to obtain freedom; finding shelter, and how that showcased the unstable transition from slavery to freedom; and confronting removal, which demonstrates the problems within the refugee camps. Through Eliza Bogan, Taylor portrayed life while fighting for the Union, and what fighting meant to the refugees; facing problems with hunger, and what that meant for refugee rations; and clothing and the role refugees played in supplying those clothes. Finally, through Gabriel Burdett, Taylor demonstrated the role of faith and the effects of the aftermath of the war on the refugee camps.
While the three stories follow different examples and demonstrate different aspects of refugeeism, Taylor can make sense of them individually and weaves them together to leave readers with a good idea of what it was like living as a refugee. By framing her narrative through the lenses of three different experiences, and not as hundreds or thousands of experiences mentioned randomly, she can create an easy-to-understand interpretation of the hardships faced by refugees. Through this narrative, she does what she set out to do. She recovers the stories of refugees, shares their flights from slavery and their searches for freedom, paints the material and physical landscape of the camps, and answers the questions that she set out to answer. In addition, to answer her questions, she also demonstrates how the necessities of life were essential to obtaining freedom for refugees and how that same freedom was reliant on the military. While narrative style and accomplishment of goals are great, they are nothing without credibility, which Taylor has.
As previously mentioned, this book has one hell of a notes section. With a length of one hundred pages, if you want to know more about something from within the book, you will find something to continue your research in the endnotes or the bibliography. That being said, those sources were a crucial part of what makes Taylor's book as trustworthy as it is. You can tell, not only from her writing, that she knows what she is talking about. Her usage of primary sources, periodicals, newspapers, and census data shows that she knows more than just what others have said about the topic and has interpreted some of the information herself.
Bringing all of these critiques together, I feel like Taylor did a respectable job at supplying an understanding of the topic to readers. The way that she set up her narrative, did what she intended to do, and proved her credibility through her sources made for an explanation of the situation that was quite enjoyable to read through and was a great place to start my research on the topic. My only gripe is that I fear the rest of my research will be worse seeing as this book will most likely be more digestible than anything else I will pick up on the topic.
In the introduction, Taylor set out what she wanted the book to do for the topic. Embattled Freedom is an act of recovery for the lost stories of refugees, "the story of what it meant to search for freedom in the middle of a war" (8), an example of the "'long emancipation from slavery" (8), a pullback from politics, and a zoom-in on the "material reality [and physical needs] of the camps" (12). As put by Taylor, the book is meant to answer "Who exactly were the refugees? Where did they come from? And what did they experience" (15). To answer these questions, she frames her narrative using three different experiences that all come together to exemplify life as a refugee.
Immediately after her introduction, Taylor dives into setting up her narrative. She centered it around three different stories from three different people(s): Edward and Emma Whitehurst, two storekeepers; Eliza Bogan, a laundress; and Gabriel Burdett, a minister. By using these three as examples, Taylor exemplified the struggles of refugees during the Civil War. Through the Whitehursts, Taylor showcased the experience of securing work, and how that work benefitted the Union and how it intersected with refugee efforts to obtain freedom; finding shelter, and how that showcased the unstable transition from slavery to freedom; and confronting removal, which demonstrates the problems within the refugee camps. Through Eliza Bogan, Taylor portrayed life while fighting for the Union, and what fighting meant to the refugees; facing problems with hunger, and what that meant for refugee rations; and clothing and the role refugees played in supplying those clothes. Finally, through Gabriel Burdett, Taylor demonstrated the role of faith and the effects of the aftermath of the war on the refugee camps.
While the three stories follow different examples and demonstrate different aspects of refugeeism, Taylor can make sense of them individually and weaves them together to leave readers with a good idea of what it was like living as a refugee. By framing her narrative through the lenses of three different experiences, and not as hundreds or thousands of experiences mentioned randomly, she can create an easy-to-understand interpretation of the hardships faced by refugees. Through this narrative, she does what she set out to do. She recovers the stories of refugees, shares their flights from slavery and their searches for freedom, paints the material and physical landscape of the camps, and answers the questions that she set out to answer. In addition, to answer her questions, she also demonstrates how the necessities of life were essential to obtaining freedom for refugees and how that same freedom was reliant on the military. While narrative style and accomplishment of goals are great, they are nothing without credibility, which Taylor has.
As previously mentioned, this book has one hell of a notes section. With a length of one hundred pages, if you want to know more about something from within the book, you will find something to continue your research in the endnotes or the bibliography. That being said, those sources were a crucial part of what makes Taylor's book as trustworthy as it is. You can tell, not only from her writing, that she knows what she is talking about. Her usage of primary sources, periodicals, newspapers, and census data shows that she knows more than just what others have said about the topic and has interpreted some of the information herself.
Bringing all of these critiques together, I feel like Taylor did a respectable job at supplying an understanding of the topic to readers. The way that she set up her narrative, did what she intended to do, and proved her credibility through her sources made for an explanation of the situation that was quite enjoyable to read through and was a great place to start my research on the topic. My only gripe is that I fear the rest of my research will be worse seeing as this book will most likely be more digestible than anything else I will pick up on the topic.
August 2, 2022
This is an excellent book that I highly recommend for any Civil War aficionados who have a general command of the events of the American Civil War (that is why I recommend it with 4 stars rather than 5 as there is a healthy level of introductory knowledge that would be helpful to reading this book). It is a detailed and personalized analysis of the ways in which refugee slaves won, fought, lost, and regained their freedom across multiple fronts and locations during the American Civil War. While never explicitly stated as such, this book is a definitive piece of evidence that the Union Army's emancipatory mission in the Civil War was an example of haphazard mission-creep that came about in reaction to a burgeoning refugee crisis rather than some enlightened crusade led by abolitionists and high-minded politicos such as Abraham Lincoln. The most compelling parts of the book are the chapters on the individual experiences of refugees from slavery whose experiences and hardships continually appeared in the records of quartermaster departments, military orders, chaplain's records, diaries, requisition orders, and official reports about the series of refugee, or "contraband," camps that the Union army built next to around the areas they occupied in the South. Anyone who is interested or serious about studying the end of slavery in America and the beginnings of Black American history after the Civil War should start with this book.
January 15, 2021
This book does a nice job of connecting two massive historical themes, that of antebellum slave life with the war itself. All too often our "survey level" understanding of history means that we focus on emancipation as an instantaneous moment of change. It wasn't. For the people liberated during the Civil War, the process of surviving the war was a massive challenge and undertaking. Freedom was a battle, Taylor argues convincingly.
I came to this book with a familiarity, but I came away from it with a much stronger understanding of what refugees endured during the war. The thematic style is helpful in connecting major human needs like food, clothing, and faith back to survival in the midst of war. The "case study" families helped to illuminate many of the overarching themes developed throughout the book. It leaves the reader with a sense of complexity and overwhelming human suffering.
I would definitely recommend this book for 19th century US reading lists. It's a must read for Civil War comps lists moving forward. I would not recommend it for an undergraduate course, but I could certainly see graduate classes using this text. If tasked with teaching a graduate course in slavery or the Civil War and Reconstruction, Taylor's book would be a welcome addition with a tone that is appropriately academic with readily accessible prose.
I came to this book with a familiarity, but I came away from it with a much stronger understanding of what refugees endured during the war. The thematic style is helpful in connecting major human needs like food, clothing, and faith back to survival in the midst of war. The "case study" families helped to illuminate many of the overarching themes developed throughout the book. It leaves the reader with a sense of complexity and overwhelming human suffering.
I would definitely recommend this book for 19th century US reading lists. It's a must read for Civil War comps lists moving forward. I would not recommend it for an undergraduate course, but I could certainly see graduate classes using this text. If tasked with teaching a graduate course in slavery or the Civil War and Reconstruction, Taylor's book would be a welcome addition with a tone that is appropriately academic with readily accessible prose.
August 11, 2020
This excellent book covers an aspect of the Civil War that gets little attention -- the circumstances of enslaved people who fled their owners and sought refuge behind Union Army lines. What was the status of these people, who came to be known as "contraband," before emancipation? And did their status change materially even after "emancipation"? Sadly, the Union Army didn't always supply the safe haven these people sought. Even the Northern relief agencies that were there to help often harbored racist ideas about who the black people were and what they could achieve. The former slaves showed great personal initiative, but were thwarted time and again by the capricious decisions of Army officers and military "necessity." Then President Andrew Johnson's policies were a virtual nullification of the war, as the federal government was more interested in making peace with traitorous white former Confederates than helping black Army veterans and other freedmen. Truly a sad episode in American history.
April 30, 2022
Embattled Freedom gives American readers, esp. white readers, an almost completely unknown history of how the first freedom known by most American slaves was inside the Union Army lines in literal refugee camps. Kentucky's Camp Nelson being a prominent one. Yet Dr. Taylor, faculty at the Univ. of Ky, points out over and over how this was only the beginning of the black struggle for freedom in a mostly hostile white culture; the work of Berea's John Fee, a notable exception.
Taylor uses actual slave families and individuals to show how this "embattled" reality continued well into the Twentieth Century. And should prepare us for much needed discussions and actions of reparations even now.
Taylor uses actual slave families and individuals to show how this "embattled" reality continued well into the Twentieth Century. And should prepare us for much needed discussions and actions of reparations even now.
January 23, 2022
Amy Murrell Taylor's Embattled Freedom should be required reading for anyone learning about American history. Taylor uncovers the history and impact of slave refugee camps in Civil War America through the stories of three refugees pursuing legal, social, and economic freedom. Throughout and beyond the four-years war, the refugees often endured forced evacuation, engaged with threats to their safety from both sides of the war, and struggled to obtain food, clothing, work, and more. Taylor expands upon every topic, some with their own chapters, and provides examples from refugee camps across the nation.
September 29, 2024
An amazing read. I loved the way we get to know 3 separate stories but also an area of the slaves and the war we rarely hear anything about--life in the refugee camps. I recommend this book to anyone that is looking to learn a lot about life for slaves during and after the civil war. Great, great read.
February 21, 2025
Taylor uses the personal narratives of three distinct slave refugee couples to illustrate the refugee experience during the civil war. This book illuminated an aspect of the U.S. Civil War that I was blind to. This was a fantastic book; I recommend this to anyone interested in Civil War history.
September 25, 2023
I love thé way this book was organized— the flow between the general and the particular. Both highly informative and deeply moving.
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January 4, 2024One of the best books which captures Kentucky’s complex history of political and cultural involvement in the civil war. Read it.
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