Troubled Refuge
April 20, 2017 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Event Navigation
By the end of the Civil War, nearly half a million slaves had taken refuge behind Union lines, in what became known as “contraband camps.” These refugee camps were crowded, dangerous places, yet some 12-15 percent of the Confederacy’s slave population took almost unimaginable risks to reach them, and they became the first places many Northerners came to know former slaves en masse.
Ranging from stories of individuals to those of armies on the move to the debates in Congress, Dr. Chandra Manning will explore what the camps were really like and how former slaves and Union soldiers warily united there to help end slavery, win the war, and forge a new version of citizenship that would matter not just for former slaves, but for all Americans.
Dr. Chandra Manning is an accomplished historian and author of Troubled Refuge and When this Cruel War Was Over. She graduated summa cum laude from Mount Holyoke College in 1993 and received the M.Phil from the National University of Ireland, Galway, in 1995. She took her Ph.D. at Harvard in 2002. Manning has taught history at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington, and was Associate Professor of History at Georgetown University. Currently, she serves as Special Advisor to the Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University.
