The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in American history, with recent estimates putting the death toll at nearly 700,000.
More than 160 years later, the legacy of the war is still being written. One part of that legacy has nearly been forgotten, one historian argues and it involves free people of color.
At the onset of the Civil War, the majority of people of color in America were enslaved. Still, nearly half a million were free, and the contested identity of those people, he writes, ultimately helped lay the groundwork for a more expansive vision of American freedom.
On this episode, we discuss that vision, the complicated legacy of the Civil War and Warren Milteer Jr.’s new book, “Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era.”
GUESTS:
Warren Milteer Jr., associate professor of history at George Washington University and author of "Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era."
