Memories of Civil War Childhoods and Possibilities of Freedom at the Close of the Nineteenth Century

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In the last two decades of the twentieth century, those who had been children during the American Civil War carried on fights over freedom that their parents had begun by deploying their own childhood memories to political ends. This piece is a draft of Chapter Five from my in-progress book manuscript, Freedom’s Generation: Coming of Age in the Era of Emancipation. The project considers transformational experiences of Black and white children from across the nation who grew up during the Civil War years, arguing that members of this generation were the most important actors involved in shaping the many meanings of emancipation over time.