Navigating Liberty

John Cimprich is retired professor of history at Thomas More University and author of Slavery's End in Tennessee, 1861-1865 and Fort Pillow, a Civil War Massacre, and Public Memory.

"Cimprich explores the complex interactions between freed African Americans and northern philanthropists in the South during the Civil War, sheding light on the fraught relationship between these two groups, as African Americans often harbored mistrust toward reformers due to their paternalistic policies and racist outlooks. . . . Cimprich offers a nuanced and detailed examination of northern reformers' and African Americans' wartime efforts to implement their conception of freedom. This book is a welcome addition to the study of slavery and the Civil War era."--Journal of Southern History "Cimprich delivers a thoroughly explored and sensitively analyzed examination of the complicated interaction of southern African Americans emerging from slavery and northern philanthropists who attempted to assist them during the Civil War. His book details how freedpeople's lofty aspirations collided with well-intentioned but sometimes unenlightened visions that whites held about the postwar racial order."--John R. Kaufman-McKivigan, editor of The Frederick Douglass Papers and author of Forgotten Firebrand: James Redpath and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America "John Cimprich has produced a deeply researched, sophisticated, and clearly written study of the relationship between white northern antislavery activists and freedom-seeking African Americans during the American Civil War. This book will be important to anyone interested in race relations, the Civil War era, and African American history."--Stanley Harrold, author of Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865