"The Civil War changed nothing and everything. Black men and women, slave and free, remained in the vanguard of the movement for universal freedom, demanding immediate emancipation. As emancipation became the issue that could not be avoided, the status of the newly freed slaves rose to prominence. Once it became evident that black people would no longer be slaves, the question became what, precisely, their status would be."
- From the book, The Long Emancipation, by Ira Berlin, cited below
"The Georgetown Election - The Negro at the Ballot Box"
(cited below)
The American Civil War (1861-1864)
Emancipation & Reconstruction
With information on the Emancipation Proclamation (1863) & Juneteenth (1866) & the Reconstruction Amendments (1865,1868 & 1870)
Source Citations:
Ira Berlin. The Long Emancipation : The Demise of Slavery in the United States. Harvard University Press, 2015.
"The Georgetown Election - The Negro at the Ballot Box" by Thomas Nast, The Mavis P. and Mary Wilson Kelsey Collection of Thomas Nast Graphics is in the Public Domain