THE RESULTS OF EMANCIPATION IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

New York: American Freedman's Union Commission,, [1867].. Detailed Report on Public and Private Relief Efforts in Early Reconstruction A succinct yet comprehensive report on the status of freedmen in the United States during and shortly after the Civil War. Prepared by a special committee of the American Freedman's Union Commission, including Salmon P. Chase and chaired by Lyman Abbott, this document was created in preparation for an international congress of antislavery societies which met at the 1867 Paris Exposition. The text includes "A brief history of emancipation as a military and political movement," "A statement of the legal and social condition in which the negro was left by emancipation," "A description of the instrumentalities employed for the improvement of his condition;--voluntary and governmental," and "What has been done by these instrumentalities: 1, to provide for his physical wants, 2. to secure impartial justice, 3. to reorganize labor, 4. to provide education." The summary provided by Abbott is descriptive despite its brevity, and discusses the changing popular and official attitudes towards slavery throughout the course of the war, following the vehement repudiation of Fremont's early activities in Missouri to the Emancipation Proclamation. The remaining sections discuss attitudes towards freedmen in the South and the progress of public legislation and private relief organizations. Abbot covers colonization schemes, literal and effective disfranchisement, racial violence, the injustice of the sharecropping system (printing an example contract), and more: "In short, it seemed as if no means were left untried to manifest the exasperation of the ex-slaveholders towards those whose nominal freedom they were compelled to acknowledge." The activities of Northern relief efforts are also summarized from the time of the war, covering the Sea Islands experiment, the American Missionary Association, and of course the history of the Freedman's Bureau. The final section is dedicated entirely to the effort to provide education for free Blacks in the South. The report closes with an appendix which includes selections from state laws, statistics of violence against freedmen, the guidelines of the National Freedman's Relief Association, the text of the General Order which organized the Freedman's Bureau, and statistics of the Bureau's hospitals in the South. The chief author of this report, Lyman Abbott, was secretary of the American Freedman's Union Commission from 1865 to 868. The Commission's chief goal was to provide education for freedmen, and they published the monthly "American Freedman" periodical from 1866 to 1869. Abbott was a lawyer-turned-preacher, cousin by marriage to Hannibal Hamlin, and a prolific author of Christian books and periodicals, including several in defense of evolution. A scarce and detailed post-war report on the effects of emancipation, prior to the collapse of radical reconstruction. Modern brown cloth, gilt leather label. Lightly tanned. Very good. SABIN 70121.