Families and Freedom: A Documentary History of African American Kinship in the Civil War Era. - book reviews

American Visions, Feb-March, 1997 by Joanne Harris

Crowding the shelves of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., are records of the Bureau of Colored Troops, the Freedmen's Bureau and various federal armies. Among those records are letters by slaves and former slaves, many of which speak directly of their concerns as parents and children, husbands and wives, aunts and uncles.

Imagine the elation expressed at the reunion of siblings separated for years by slavery. Imagine the satisfaction of two lovers finally able to legitimize a marriage that was once denied by law. in slaves' own words, these documents describe family life at the time of emancipation, antebellum domestic slaves' lives, and slaves' aspirations. This volume, the latest in series by the same editors, was two decades in the making. It is terribly moving.