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• Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery by Joseph P. Reidy
• Kellie Carter Jackson

In Illusions of Emancipation: The Pursuit of Freedom and Equality in the Twilight of Slavery, Joseph Reidy offers a sweeping portrait of black liberation from the Civil War to the beginning of the Radical Reconstruction period. In American history, there is a tendency to believe that emancipation was immediate and relatively uniform. But Reidy argues that legal and military action combined did not provide the instant solution to black American life. He powerfully contends that emancipation was a process, unfolding differently for black Americans all across the country. Emancipation created expectations or beliefs about what freedom entailed and to what freedom entitled black people as a newly adopted citizens. It looked one way for former slaves grappling with life in the South and another for free black Northerners grappling with the protections and provisions of citizenship. Moreover, after the Civil War, freedom generally felt uncertain to newly freed slaves. Reidy explains, "The collapse [of slavery] did not necessarily occur in one fell swoop but in a series of incremental movements, backward as well as forward, some more fleeting than others" (20). Accordingly, the process of liberation provided hope and frustration.

Reidy divides his work into three interrelated frameworks to help readers understand how black Americans reconciled the events unfolding about them through the lens of time, space, and home. While time and space shaped the contours of black life, with its restrictions, boundaries, and possibilities, home has always been a fraught concept in black life. The idea of "going home" after the war was not the same for soldiers as for the enslaved. Slavery and the war undermined every positive possible meaning for the word home. Anti-black violence at the local and state level as well as political disenfranchisement made the idea of home just as elusive as the concept of freedom. In many ways, freedom felt like approaching a horizon that could never be reached. The countless stories of struggle and retracted promises in Illusions of Emancipation stunted black progression. Reidy's work poignantly illustrates why there was "little wonder that the question repeatedly arose whether the Union's victory over the Confederacy left any lasting accomplishments or whether it, too, was an illusion" (21). [End Page 145]

Reidy writes that even when the Thirteenth Amendment was made the law of the land, it offered little direction for African Americans. Yes, slavery had come to an end, but what was next? "It said only what was not to be," Reidy explained. The Thirteenth Amendment said nothing of "what was to be, which they [African Americans] desperately wanted to know" (266). For decades, scholars and activists have been asking: where do we go from here? By using the final chapter to focus on the idea of home, Reidy features the myriad of ways black men and women attempted to lay claim to their humanity, citizenship, and political enfranchisement. The fight for black people was always about enjoying the full measure of liberty in the land of their birth and this struggle continues with us today.

Illusions of Emancipation is deeply researched and packed with insights and rich anecdotes drawn from the Freedom and Southern Society Project (FSSP), which contains volumes of personal and political accounts regarding experiences of enslaved people from 1861 to 1867. Drawing on the immense resources of the National Archives of the United States, the project editors of the FSSP selected nearly fifty thousand documents from millions related to how formerly enslaved people navigated emancipation from 1861 to the beginnings of Reconstruction. Reidy poses no easy solutions but rather compels us to consider the crippling inability of America's legislative bodies to reach consensus regarding the rights and privileges African Americans could enjoy as citizens. Reidy has given the field of Civil War history a gift. Freedom was and is complicated. By illustrating how black Americans did...

审核人：

• 解放的幻想：自由与平等奴隶制暮光追求由约瑟夫P.雷迪
• 凯莉·卡特·杰克逊

在解放的幻象中：奴隶制在暮色中对自由和平等的追求约瑟夫·里迪（Joseph Reidy）提供了从内战到激进重建时期开始的黑人解放的详尽画像。在美国历史上，有一种趋势认为解放是立竿见影且相对统一的。但是里迪认为，法律和军事行动相结合并不能为美国黑人的生活提供即时解决方案。他有力地主张，解放是一个过程，对全国各地的黑人来说，解放的进程都不同。解放使人们对自由意味着什么以及自由赋予黑人作为新收养的公民的期望或信念。对于以前的奴隶，他们努力应对南方的生活，这似乎是一种方式，对于自由的黑人黑人，则要努力应对公民的保护和规定，这似乎是一种方式。而且，在内战之后，对于刚释放的奴隶来说，自由通常感到不确定。里迪解释说：“（奴隶制）的崩溃不一定发生在一个突然的爆发中，而是在一系列的渐进运动中，既向前又向后向前移动，有些比其他的稍纵即逝”（20）。因此，解放进程带来了希望和挫败感。

瑞迪将他的工作分为三个相互关联的框架，以帮助读者理解黑人美国人如何通过时间，空间和家园的镜头来协调发生在他们身上的事件。尽管时间和空间塑造了黑人生活的轮廓，但它的局限性，边界和可能性却使家庭始终成为黑人生活中充满生机的概念。战后“回家”的想法与士兵和被奴役的人不同。奴隶制和战争破坏了“家”一词的所有积极意义。在地方和州一级的反黑人暴力以及政治上的剥夺公民权的权利，使家庭观念与自由观念一样难以捉摸。在许多方面，自由就像进入了永远无法达到的境界。《解放幻象》中无数的奋斗故事和缩回的诺言阻碍了黑人的发展。里迪的著作有力地说明了“为什么很少有人怀疑这个问题反复出现了，即联盟对同盟的胜利是否留下了任何持久的成就，或者它是否也是一种幻想”（21）。[结束页145]

里迪写道，即使《第十三修正案》成为土地法律，也为非洲裔美国人提供了很少的指导。是的，奴隶制已经结束，但是接下来是什么呢？里迪解释说：“它只说了不该做的事。” 《第十三修正案》没有提到“他们（非裔美国人）拼命想知道的情况”（266）。几十年来，学者和激进主义者一直在问：我们从这里去哪里？通过使用最后一章来强调家的概念，瑞迪介绍了黑人和白人试图对自己的人性，公民身份和政治权利提出要求的多种方式。争取黑人的斗争总是要在他们出生的土地上享有充分的自由，而这一斗争今天仍在继续。

解放的幻想我们对自由和南方社会项目（FSSP）进行了深入的研究，并收集了深刻的见解和轶事，其中包含有关1861年至1867年被奴役者经历的大量个人和政治记载。在美国，FSSP的项目编辑从数百万份文件中选出了近五万份文件，这些文件与前奴隶制人民如何解放1861年至重建初期有关。里迪没有提出简单的解决方案，而是迫使我们考虑美国立法机构的严重丧失能力，无法就非洲裔美国人作为公民享有的权利和特权达成共识。里迪（Reidy）给了南北战争历史领域一个礼物。自由曾经是而且很复杂。