Seizing Freedom: Slave Emancipation and Liberty for All

Nearly 80 years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois described the “general strike of slaves” during the Civil War, in which the unfree laborers either ran away from their masters’ plantations or stayed on only to slow down and sabotage the work. Most slaves didn’t wait for someone to free them, they took advantage of the war’s many disruptions and freed themselves. Historian Roediger (How Race Survived U.S. History) takes this as his focal point, offering up a counterbalance to recent historical works—and a big-budget Hollywood movie as well—that have de-emphasized slaves’ agency to highlight the roles of prominent whites in the emancipation of slaves. His first chapter centers on the pursuit of Jubilee, the biblical concept of a “cyclical time of liberation, of abolition, and of mechanisms of redress that specifically included land redistribution.” Roediger expands his scope to investigate how slaves also created the meaning of freedom, and the following three chapters examine a “fascinating brew of issues” associated with the general strike and self-emancipation, ranging from whiteness and disability to working-class agitation for the eight-hour day and women’s suffrage. It’s a brief and stimulating work, but equally dense, and though Roediger’s intellectual reach is expansive, it will likely prove difficult for lay readers. Illus. [em](Nov.) [/em]