After President Lincoln issued the final Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, Confederate slaves who could reach Union lines often made that perilous journey. A great many of the young and middle-aged among them, along with other black men in the free and border slave states, joined the Union army. These U.S. Colored Troops (USCT), as the War Department designated most black units, materially helped to win the Civil War-performing a variety...

"Freedom Soldiers follows the lives of once-enslaved soldiers as they fought for the US Army during the American Civil War and decamped in their ongoing struggle to become free. Undoing the many vestiges of slavery was a protracted process, which unfolded amid a bloody war. Thousands on this rocky road of liberation entered the US Army, where their process of emancipation continued. To engage the process and influence their evolving bonds with the...