Booknotes: Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom

New Arrival:

• Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era by Warren Eugene Milteer, Jr. (UNC Press, 2026).

In the introduction to his book Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom: Free People of Color and the Fight for Equal Rights in the Civil War Era Warren Eugene Milteer argues that his fellow historians "have done little to examine the lived experiences of free people of color in a way that highlights their distinct position in Civil War-era society." Spread across the entire breadth of the country and numbering almost half a million, with just over half concentrated along the Atlantic Seaboard, the experience of freedom held by these individuals molded "(t)heir understandings of the importance of national unity, slavery and emancipation, military participation, equal rights, and other issues..." (pg. 2).

From the description: "Their unique status as already free persons before emancipation shaped their experiences of military service, political activism, and community life in ways distinct from those newly freed from slavery and affected how they navigated the pursuit of equal rights."

Milteer recognizes these already free persons as a "diverse lot," his study group including both persons born free and those who "had gained their liberty at some point in their lives through the legal process of manumission." Others "obtained their freedom through purchases, gifts, court cases, and the last wills and testaments of masters" (pg. 2-3).

Out of This Strife Will Come Freedom "brings the stories of free people of color to the forefront, revealing that freedom was not simply the absence of enslavement but a powerful foundation of identity, rights, and belonging. Their determined struggles and strategies before, during, and after the war helped redefine what it meant to be a citizen in a nation grappling with democracy and equality."