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Working for Citizenship in Civil War Contraband Camps

Working for Citizenship in Civil War Contraband Camps chandra manning On a bright spring afternoon in 1863 in Corinth, Mississippi, nearly twenty-four hundred black men, women, and children marched, sang, and carried festive banners while Col. John Eaton, Chaplain James Alexander, and Gen. Lorenzo Thomas watched. At the parade's conclusion, Thomas assured the former slaves that the time had come for all of them, "men and women," to become "citizens."1 Thomas, a former slaveholder acting as agent of the very United States government that had denied the possibility of black citizenship in the Dred Scott decision six years earlier, stood in the middle of a contraband camp full of refugees from slavery and extolled their U.S. citizenship. He did so partly in response to black men's Union army service, as historians have long recognized, but at that moment, he was not talking only­or even mainly--to black soldiers. He was also talking to black civilians, primarily women and children, and he called them "citizens" because the tens of thousands of black men, women, and children who placed themselves in direct contact with the U.S. government by fleeing to Civil War contraband camps throughout the occupied South altered the relationship between the central state and the individual in http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png The Journal of the Civil War Era University of North Carolina Press

Working for Citizenship in Civil War Contraband Camps

The Journal of the Civil War Era , Volume 4 (2) – May 2, 2014

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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright @ The University of North Carolina Press
ISSN
2159-9807
Publisher site
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Abstract

chandra manning On a bright spring afternoon in 1863 in Corinth, Mississippi, nearly twenty-four hundred black men, women, and children marched, sang, and carried festive banners while Col. John Eaton, Chaplain James Alexander, and Gen. Lorenzo Thomas watched. At the parade's conclusion, Thomas assured the former slaves that the time had come for all of them, "men and women," to become "citizens."1 Thomas, a former slaveholder acting as agent of the very United States government that had denied the possibility of black citizenship in the Dred Scott decision six years earlier, stood in the middle of a contraband camp full of refugees from slavery and extolled their U.S. citizenship. He did so partly in response to black men's Union army service, as historians have long recognized, but at that moment, he was not talking only­or even mainly--to black soldiers. He was also talking to black civilians, primarily women and children, and he called them "citizens" because the tens of thousands of black men, women, and children who placed themselves in direct contact with the U.S. government by fleeing to Civil War contraband camps throughout the occupied South altered the relationship between the central state and the individual in

Journal

The Journal of the Civil War EraUniversity of North Carolina Press

Published: May 2, 2014

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