Milliken's Bend

The military and cultural significance of the Union army's employment of black soldiers is part of an expanding literature, but detailed, scholarly book length looks at specific engagements comprise a more recent phenomenon. Deep Bottom and Crater books have been published within the past two years.  Honey Hill remains a notable omission, but next year will see the release of Linda Barnickel's Milliken's Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory (LSUP, 2013). The military aspects of Milliken's Bend are well documented, but this is the first book level treatment.

From the publisher: "In addition to describing the battle and the situations leading up to it, the work also provides a much broader examination of the Southern fears over slave insurrection; the violent culture of Texas; what Emancipation meant to white Southerners, white Northerners and black slaves; prejudice against African Americans in the Union army; the violence of Reconstruction in northern Louisiana; and an examination of the ways Milliken’s Bend has been forgotten – and remembered, over the past 150 years."