Title: The Civil War and Ideas of Freedom | Ultius
Headings: The Civil War and Ideas of Freedom
The Civil War and Ideas of Freedom
The Civil War and path to freedom
Death toll of the Civil War
Freedom as an idea during the Civil War
Looking back at post-Civil War freedoms and success gained
Conclusion
Works Cited
Tags
Author

Content: As Manning’s book, What This Cruel War Was Over, goes on to prove is that there were deeply engrained traditions being held onto like in the case of General Robert E. Lee who did not want to see change come to his beloved state of Virginia. For Lee and the Confederacy, the Civil War marked a brutal time of growing pains for those Americans who were witness to the horrors of these battles that would eventually maintain and modernize America, as we still know it today. Looking back at post-Civil War freedoms and success gained
It is interesting to look at the Civil War and ideas of freedom retrospectively, not just from our current time in history looking back to the 1860s, but to read about the reactions of those from both sides, and from the emancipated slaves themselves, who lived through the Reconstruction period. It seems the war had seriously question any idealism held by those who felt that war equated to glory. William Tecumseh Sherman, another key leader for the Union cause and ultimate strategic victory, gathered several hundred freed slaves in the wake of the war that would only become the beginning of their struggle towards freedom. The leaders who came forth from the Black population described their ideas of freedom in much clearer terms than the white men who fought so ardently for or against slavery. Foner explains, “black leaders brought out of slavery a clear definition of freedom. Asked what he understood by slavery, Garrison Frazier, a Baptist minister…responded that it meant one person’s ‘receiving by irresistible power the work of another man, and not by his consent’” (Foner 586). Additionally, Frazier comments freedom meant “placing us where we could reap the fruit of our own labor, and take care of ourselves’” (Foner 586). It is remarkable that this definition of freedom is so very similar to the original settlers of the colonies who wanted to break away from Great Britain.