From the
introduction and two chapters read so far in Jim Down’s Sick from Freedom: African American Illness and Suffering During the
Civil War and Reconstruction, I find the way he opens his chapters to be
rather effective. Starting each chapter with personal accounts of different
freedmen and freedwomen rather than simply giving statistics or generalizing the
events that transpired during the Civil War and Reconstruction humanizes these
events. Furthermore, these personal accounts give insight on how freedmen and
freedwomen were regarded by the Union soldiers and abolitionists. Something that
Downs does well is exhibit that slaves were not emancipated simply because the
American government realized the atrocities of slavery and felt the moral
obligation to abolish it. Instead, as Downs shows, slaves were emancipated to
add labor to the Union army while simultaneously further crippling the South
and its economy.[1]
Through the personal accounts that Downs adds into the chapters, then, I was continuously
drawn to the language that northerners used when regarding freedmen and
freedwomen. Phrases such as “those people” and advertisements calling for “fifty able-bodied
negroes for labor…” further exemplifies that black people were still seen as lesser
beings who were only intended to be used as laborers for the war effort.[2] Another interesting topic
that Downs writes about is what was to become of slaves after they were
emancipated: were they to integrate into American society, be shipped back to
Africa, or used elsewhere, such as in the Caribbean?[3] This discourse amongst northerners
and abolitionists, once again, shows that the country was not truly prepared for
the emancipation of slaves and did not want these newly freed slaves integrated
into American society.
[1] Jim Downs, Sick
from Freedom: African American Illness and Suffering During the Civil War and
Reconstruction, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 38.
[2] Ibid 47.
[3] Ibid, 49.
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