The Meaning of Freedom:
Black and White Responses
to the End of Slavery

Confederate defeat and the end of slavery brought far-reaching changes in the lives of all Southerners. The destruction of slavery led inevitably to conflict between blacks seeking to breathe substantive meaning into their freedom by asserting their independence from white control, and whites seeking to retain as much as possible of the old order.

The meaning of freedom itself became a point of conflict in the Reconstruction South.

Former slaves relished the opportunity to flaunt their liberation from the innumerable regulations of slavery.

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Immediately after the Civil War, they sought to give meaning to freedom by reuniting families separated under slavery, establishing their own churches and schools, seeking economic autonomy, and demanding equal civil and political rights