Free At Last: A Documentary History of Slavery, Freedom, and the

Widely recognized as "one of the nation's foremost scholars on the slave era" (Boston Globe), Bancroft Prize-winning historian Ira Berlin has changed the way we think about African-American life in slavery and freedom. This classic volume, now available in a handsome new edition, is an indispensable resource for educators and general readers alike.

Free at Last brings together some of the most remarkable correspondence ever written by Americans. These letters, personal testimonies, official transcripts, and other records convey the struggle of black men and women to overthrow the slave system, to aid the Union cause, and to give meaning to their newly won freedom in a war-torn nation. Drawn from the landmark reference volumes of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, this "work of deep significance for all Americans" (Washington Post Book World) offers a unique way of understanding emancipation.

“The human story of African Americans in the Civil War, which, the editors contend, was also a second American revolution. Between 1861 and 1865 government was transformed, citizienship redefined, social classes rearranged--and blacks were at the center of the process. The texts offered have a common denominator: the determination displayed by African American men and women to control their own destinies, especially in relations with whites. The editing and annotations are models of their kind, explaining and clarifying while preserving the originals' authenticity and immediacy.
--Publishers Weekly

“Drawn from letters, affidavits, records, and other documents collected by The Freedmen and Southern Society Project, Free at Last gives voice to compelling observations about slavery written by both blacks and whites, in the North and South, during the Civil War. Ranging from clever rhetoric to personal accounts of unspeakable cruelty, the documents display crude eloquence and sophisticated commentary together, without correction or alteration. Editorial annotations provide a unifying narrative thread…. Highly recommended for public and secondary school libraries.
”--Lawrence E. Ellis, Library Journal

Ira Berlin is a Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland in College Park, where he lives. He is the author of Many Thousands Gone and Generations of Captivity and the co-editor of Remembering Slavery, Families and Freedom, and Slavery in New York (The New Press). His books have won the Frederick Douglass Prize, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Abraham Lincoln Prize, among many other awards.