Troubled Refuge, Chandra Manning
Troubled Refuge, Chandra Manning
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Troubled Refuge
Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War

Author: Chandra Manning

Narrator: Bernadette Dunne

Unabridged: 11 hr 58 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/16/2016

Synopsis

A fascinating and original portrait of the escaped-slave refugee camps and how they shaped the course of emancipation and black citizenship.By the end of the Civil War, nearly half a million slaves had taken refuge behind Union lines in what became known as “contraband camps.” These were crowded, dangerous places, yet some 12–15 percent of the Confederacy’s slave population took almost unimaginable risks to reach them, and they became the first places Northerners came to know former slaves en masse.Ranging from stories of individuals to those of armies on the move to the debates in Congress, Troubled Refuge probes what the camps were really like and how former slaves and Union soldiers warily united there. This alliance, which would outlast the war, helped to destroy slavery and ward off the surprisingly tenacious danger of reenslavement. But it also raised unsettling questions about the relationship between American civil and military authority and reshaped the meaning of American citizenship to the benefit as well as the lasting cost of African Americans.

About Chandra Manning

Chandra Manning graduated summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in 1993, received an MPhil from the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 1995, and a PhD from Harvard in 2002. She has taught history at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and at Georgetown University. Currently, she serves as special advisor to the dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She lives in Braintree, Massachusetts, with her family.

About Bernadette Dunne

Bernadette Dunne is the winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and has twice been nominated for the prestigious Audie Award. She studied at the Royal National Theatre in London and the Studio Theater in Washington, DC, and has appeared at the Kennedy Center and off Broadway.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Sara

A bit of a slog to get through and sometimes repetitive but definitely a book worth reading. I suppose I always took a simplistic view of the Civil War. Before it there was slavery. After it there wasn't. This book demolishes that myth and goes into detail to show how the Union Army and slaves/free......more

Goodreads review by H

Excellent book on an underreported aspect of the Civil War. Well put listings of events, results, successes and failures.......more

Goodreads review by Gregory

Chandra Manning is one of the best historians alive right now. Full stop. My expectations were high for this book after loving Manning's *What This Cruel War Was Over* and *Troubled Refuge* delivered. The book's subjects are the refugee former enslaved people who moved out of literal bondage and into......more

Goodreads review by Susan

Some books address history widely, and others pick one aspect and go deep. Troubled Refuge is one of those that picks a relatively small topic… the contraband camps during the Civil War, where freed Black people joined up with Union armies for liberty, employment, and protection… and considers these......more

Quotes

“A vitally important book, and it settles the long-standing issue of the freedmen’s own role in exiting slavery. The Union army and other agencies played a part, to be sure, but freedmen’s early role in their own future has never been dealt with to anything like this extent…An essential contribution to the history of the Civil War and its aftermath.”

Booklist (starred review)

“A vivid, compelling view of the struggles undertaken by escaped slaves during the Civil War…Manning conveys in gritty detail the fraught alliance between refugees and their military protectors.”

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Manning, an assistant professor of history at Georgetown University, illustrates in this enlightening study that many enslaved men, women, and children—nearly half a million people—took advantage of wartime chaos and the proximity of Union forces to escape their owners and seek refuge among the soldiers.”

Publishers Weekly

“Manning does an excellent job of placing events within their historical context without falling into the trap of tying twenty-first-century morality into nineteenth-century situations. This refreshing work will appeal to those who appreciated David Cecelski’s The Fire of Freedom: Abraham Galloway and the Slaves’ Civil War, which seeks to give former slaves credit for their role in both securing their freedom and ensuring Union victory.”

Library Journal

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