Federal government debated political and legal definitions. Professor turner also discusses of religious role and educational institutions in newly freed africanamerican communities. Professor turner ok, so today, we are going to be talking about the meaning of freedom and i wanted to capture our earlier discussions about the meaning of freedom when we talked about free communities, free folks in the north and how we came with this representation of freedom. Reedom the question of freedom and what does it mean. For today, we are going to be talking about what did freedom mean . In particular, what did it mean to the free people . In january of 1865, the secretary of war, Edward Stanton and general William Sherman had a meeting with 20 preachers in savannah, georgia. They were preachers, pastors, lay Church Leaders and they wanted to find out from these preachers basically what is it that the freed people wanted from freedom . What did they expect . And what did they expect in the aftermath of the emancipation proclamation . Who wasp of 20 people ostensibly representative of freed black folks in the community selected garrison frazier, a 67yearold man to be the representative of the community. To speak for them. Eral sherman asked him what did he understand freedom to me especially in light of the emancipation proclamation . And he said taking us from under the yoke of bondage and lacing us where we can reap the fruit of our labor, take care of us, and a cyst the government in maintaining our freedom. You can hear some of the language from the emancipation proclamation. Assisting the government in maintaining freedom. People who were emancipated serving in the military, go to work and do that diligently. He is reflecting that. He is also reflecting the ability to reap the fruits of their labor so they get the benefit of their labor. The secretary and the general asked other questions like could black people take care of themselves . Yes, they could. What did they need . Land. Did they want to live among white people . Some did but garrison fraser did not. In this discussion, we can start to see what freed people wanted theytheir lives even as look at the governmental exploration for what freedom meant for freed people. They were already asserting what they wanted freedom to be. Is building on our conversations of freedom and freed black life and how precarious it was. In moving into what two freedom meaning more. What could it mean . One of the other things that was connecting was the question of how do black people appear on the landscape of the United States . At the beginning of the term we talked about whether black identity formation or was it something about pushing the nation to live out the true meaning of the crete. We are thinking about the question of whether or not freed people were pushing the meaning of what this nation was supposed to be and what its founding documents claim trip. In the process of doing that, we will start to see how it was that when people talk about emancipation and the moment of reconstruction, that sometimes the question is framed the way that sherman and stanton framed it which is basically what can the freed people do for the country . And theres a question about what do the freed people want for themselves . And we look at reconstruction. A lot of times, what is it that freed people wanted for subsumeds it gets by the question of what can they do for the nation . I think we need to keep both of those questions and balance. Thinking about the relationship of their freed people to the nation but also and more prominently, what is it that free people wanted for themselves . One of the ways we will get at that is by thinking about these first places where freed people lived, where they went to. They were called contraband camps. We will spend the majority of our time looking at how freed people to find freedom. With someo start out of what i call the first class of freed people. That is the black soldiers. When we think about lack soldiers, many of them were freed black men that enlisted to support the union effort. Some of them were self liberatedng men who themselves from slavery and joined the union ranks. It was a real debate about whether or not enslaved men, or freed black men should support the war effort. You can think about reasons why. Think about their experience of africans in the American Revolution. What happened after the American Revolution . Did they realize the freedom that the American Revolution promise . No. That is why we had that graphic. They had freedom but it was not full or meaningful freedom or a complete freedom. There was a real debate about whether or not lack men should support the war effort. Eventually they do and they enlist. They enlist after the emancipation proclamation because it becomes a war measure to enlist black men to support the union effort. They believe they can demonstrate their commitment to the union and the principals of the nation. And that would reflect well on african people. That they were participating in this process. Refused to. Some refused to enlist and some were forced into the army even on the union side. Soldiers that participated in the war ready to jump into the war effort. But many did. They made up 10 of the union army and 25 of the union navy. There was a significant by yen for black soldiers. Buy in for black soldiers. They often did not get competent leadership because they were laboring under the systems of racism that kept them from getting their primary leaders. And they were sometimes denied the ability to hold commissioned positions as leaders. Eventually, they were allowed to gain some commissions. They have some leadership role. They were also often placed at the forefront. Cannon fodder. D put on the frontlines of different battles. They suffered some of the greatest numbers of casualties. As a result of this service. Of suffering casualties because of being placed on the front lines but also the tenor of the war was so charged that they would experience extreme violence because they were freed black men that they were viewed as being runaway slaves. Hello in tennessee fort pillow in tennessee, there was a group of black soldiers. Is a massacre of union troops trying to surrender. Black soldiers were often on the front lines. That is what happened there in tennessee where they were holed up in a fort. The Union Soldiers were trying to escape. When they tried to escape from the fort, they believed there was going to be a transport waiting for them. There was not. As they tried to escape and surrender, they were massacred and shot as they were fleeing from the fort. And a similar situation happened at the battle of the greater where there were a black soldiers on the front lines of the union effort. As they rushed in, they were blown up with mines. Massacred as a confederate soldiers were screaming no quarter. They would not be allowed to surrender. Havenly end they could would be death. We can see how black soldiers were leading the cause of the war by articulating how they could be supportive of the union. We can see how they were thinking through and struggling under some of the limitations including being denied pay. That happened early on. Some of them refused to be paid until they would get paid the same amount as white soldiers. Same compensation as far as wages as well as clothing and things like that. The other piece of what they did in terms of leadership in the war effort was in terms of helping secure freedoms for their families. I will talk in a minute about the contraband camps and how people were liberating themselves. But also happened for the men that served in the military was that they were able to gain freedom for their wives and children. They were able to figure out that by serving in the union, they could gain freedom for their families and children. We also know that when it comes to pursuing freedom, it is not viewed sometimes it is as an individual moment. People making choices for themselves. Ple also make chill choices for their families and communities. We start to think about some of the first freedoms. And the places where enslaved people started to find their first freedoms. It was and the contraband camps places where enslaved people ran to virginia minds when they heard that there was an army in the area. They knew they could find freedom there. They knew the significance of the war. This is significant. Sometimes people think people do not know what was going on. But they did. There was a black Communication Network sharing what was when the union came to the area, they knew what that meant. One of the first places of freedom was fort munro near hampton, virginia in 1861. We start to find that the first from a political crisis and a humanitarian crisis. All at the hands of an slaved people liberating themselves. The second place is fort royal, South Carolina which was viewed as a rehearsal for reconstruction in these first moments of what the reconstruction process would look like. In 1861, in virginia, there were from enslaved men who ran their person who was enslaving them. He was a colonel in the confederate army. They ran to where the union army had set up camp. They said they did not work anymore for the confederate colonel who was the end slaver. Enslaver. When they got there, virginia general Benjamin Butler had no plan for Something Like this. What would he do with these men that had liberated themselves from slavery . He figured out quickly how to handle the situation. That these men should be treated like contraband. Contraband was an idea he pulled from International Law that said any goods being transported by a neutral party could be for the benefit of the army. And could be considered contraband. He decided he would deem these men as contraband. He also recognized relatively quickly that the idea of treating these human beings like property was not a workable idea. He also realized there was a conflict of what was the union going to do with these people now that they deemed them as property but they did not want to hold property. They did not want to hold these formerly enslaved people as property. In this moment, it starts to layout the landscape by which the union could start to think about these self emancipating men as potential laborers for the war and eventually as soldiers. That is what he did. He put the men to work in the union camps. A good workaround for the time being. They had to figure out what that would mean. Much later. What ends up happening is not only are men coming to the area and camps like that, but women are coming and children are coming as well as elderly people. It becomes a question what do we do with these people . He starts a work camp essentially. Under the union guard. And had these people work for the union he had women doing laundry and cooking and taking care of the elderly they brought with them. He did not see that he could let the families what else was he going to do with them . That started to push the Political Landscape of emancipation. In South Carolina, we can see how these contraband camps impact the social and cultural aspects of emancipation. You have union presence. Self emancipating enslaved people. But you have the influence of a religious community that starts with a humanitarian crisis response. Resources for people that are emancipating themselves in South Carolina. They envisioned, the northern missionaries, they called themselves gideons. They were made up of missionaries from a variety of denominations including congregationalist and others congregationalists and others. They imagine themselves going down to teach formerly enslaved people how to become citizens. How to labor diligently. How to reproduce families that were moral. And how to create a religious community. They were shocked to find that there was already Robust Networks for education, for religion and churches that people were already taking care of their own spiritual lives. They were already pushing the landscape in terms of what it meant to be free for their families. Moment,less, in this they start to set up. So it looks like other elements of reconstruction. As established in some establishing the landscape for how the government would interact with these people. The freedmens bureau. Freedmen moment, you have contraband camps created by the impetus of freed Union Running to the lines. Socially, culturally, what are we going to do . How do we sustain and support these communities . We are turning to look a little more deeply at the question of what did it mean to be free from the perspective of self emancipating folks . It is a robust landscape of information. What did it mean in terms of labor . In terms of their mental and intellectual pursuits . In terms of their personal goals for their families and themselves . Political goals in terms of government, Office Holding . The religious community. And even geography and movement . What did it mean to be free . We heard he heard from garrison fraser that what the freed people wanted was land and to be independent. They also wanted control of their labor. They wanted to get the fruits of their own labor. A picture ways we get of what it is that freed people the now famous letter of a formerly enslaved man named Jordan Anderson writing to his former enslaver about his response to his enslavers request that he returned to the plantation that he left from and return to work. Of the things that jordan he very memorably challenges the former enslaver about the way he treated him, the violence visited upon him and his family. And he says basically in dayton, ohio, he can work and get paid every week, his wife is able to be respected and called by her name as mrs. Anderson. He calculates how much money he would get in back pay if his himer enslaver were to pay the hourly wage he gets now for the years of service he had done without pay. If he would compensate mandate for her labor mandy for her labor as well. He estimated that the amount owed to them would be about 11,680 in 19th century dollars. A significant amount. And he said if you are willing to pay me that and guarantee some other things, we will come back. He is having a moment of im not doing that. But letting his former enslaver no that this is what the wages are and i want to be compensated and respected for the work that i do. In another instance, in terms of labor and controlling labor and getting their fruits of their labor, there was an enslaved in the 1860s. A she was so known for and disciplined for going and enslaving womans perfume and going into the vanity put on a little makeup and look at herself in the out the sideeck profile. She was disciplined for doing this. For her, that is what freedom was going to mean. To be will to do that and not be policed in that way. She might have responded after emancipation the way another freed woman did. She was disciplined for not responding appropriately and weekly enough. There is a sense of i want to control my labor and i am going to push back against those systems of disciplining black labor. Some people wanted not to labor at all. They did not want to have to work for anyone. They did not want anyone to control their labor. Wasway it manifested itself not necessarily not to labor but to control the labor of the family whether it be children or wives who now wanted to stay at home or be kept at home. This idea of choosing not to labor was another choice. That they wanted. Or, to labor for themselves. The fruits ofgain their labor from their own hands. And that meant or manifested itself because as garrison fraser pointed out and as we know, enslaved people were liberated without land. From theto secure land landowners and in gauge in sharecropping or they gained a portion of the crops. And profit from that or from having crop liens where they owned their own land. Own crops grow their and have a portion of the crop they would have to give to the landowner or to the person assisting them. Was not on the best terms for the formerly enslaved people. Jacobs in the letter that we read today pointed this out. She said the freed men with few exceptions were treated cheated out of their crop of cotton. She said there was a system where people were being manipulated and not getting their full amounts. Lastly, they wanted land and they had good reason. They had good reason to want it and to believe that they would get it. General sherman, as part of the conversation he was having with the ministers of savannah was thinking about what to do with all of these freed people who had liberated themselves and the virginia army. Having all of these people falling behind because they realize the meaning of the armys presence and that they could liberate them. He figured he could take a swath of land on the eastern seaboard of georgia and South Carolina and promise to distribute some of the land to these self emancipating folks and freed people to labor on for themselves and take care of themselves. That is what would be needed in the very Agricultural Society at the time. And that is what people did. He apportioned the land. Homesteads. Ll them they labored there. But sometimes that was not fulfilled. We will highlight the point in terms of the limitations of the friedman spirit and distributing the land. They wanted to control their own land, have respect for their labor. What did it mean to be free in terms of mental and intellectual processes . Areas where of the the pursuit of literacy was robust. It was incredibly robust. Describedwashington it as a whole nation trying to go to school. I imagine everybody trying to get into the schoolhouse to get an education to learn to read, to learn math, all of the elements of education. Some of what emerges during this time from missionary and common in places like fort royal, a lot of the missionary set up schools but they also find there are already schools there. People like mary peek pictured here in the corner, the freed black woman in hampton who has already been running a free school in hampton for freed black folks before the war. There is already an infrastructure for an education of a sort among freed lack folks to educate other black folks. That continues on during the period of emancipation. There are already places where people are creating schools right and then you have people like Charlotte Boyden and Harriet Jacobs who goes south to help establish schools and teaching them. You will remember she is the daughter of james horton were, im sorry, the granddaughter of james horton who fought in the American Revolution from philadelphia. She goes down as part of gideon spanned to South Carolina and rights of her experiences with the freed children and she is exuberant energy the students bring to the classrooms and the capacity they have. She is shocked because the discourse about enslaved people had been that they were not capable of learning or they were not willing to learn. They would have to be forced to work and learn. She finds that the kids are desiring to learn. They catch on really quick. She writes about how it is really a discredit to the people who have all the resources and the opportunity and then look down upon the enslaved people and the formerly enslaved people for their lack of education when the system was built to keep them uneducated. Not their lack of independent well. She is writing and reflecting that there is a robust engagement with education going on in these areas. Every time you find these moments where the expectations of what enslaved people wanted or what they were doing are being upturned and challenged. And you have these teachers and black administrators of schools and that is Something Else freed people wanted. They wanted their schools led by people that looked like them. People that understood their experiences. People that would not look down upon them or come with preconceived notions about their capacity. Instead, that they would reflect what their experience was. They knew they wanted education. They knew they were capable of doing this kind of work. That. Ofught which led to the formation of historically black colleges and universities. Rooted in emancipation. The language around education of around what kind education freed black people needed. There was a model. Thinking of people arts with their hands or geography and all those other elements. And they also had institutions that become virginia unions, which is doma street from us. Like the seminary down in so there are all these places where formally enslaved people and self emancipated people are becoming educated. Part of the mission of the schools is the idea of educating with hands and hearts. What is that call to mind when you figure out educating heads, hands and hearts . What are they trying to do . So education could be getting people involved in the community. What else . Them the tools of what they will need in the professional world. Prof. Myers ok, and a professional world. Anybody owes . What educating head, hands and heart might mean . Is a kind of like the each one teach one thing where you educate people and they go on to educate other people . Prof. Myers like each one, teach one. Using what you learn to teach other people. It was a little bit of all those things. Educating the heads. Having something in their minds that they could do. So you need to know something about math, geography and history and all these things. Educating the hands for labor. So you know how to do things in the world that need doing. You know how to take care of your house. You know how to build a building. In a how to make a Printing Press in a newspaper. You have real, practical skills you can do something with. Educating the heart. Educating folks for service. Thinking about Community Engagement and being involved with people around them. Its a multilayered process of education. These things. Not industrial or liberal education, its a whole list. And its manufacturing levers. A lever, something you might use the lift something up. Subjugation was a process of manufacturing leverage. People who would work in a community and help the community to evolve. It was a very communal sense of what education was for. Youwas not like for the job want to have down the road, but for what you can do to help communities. And all those ways it disrupted globallse dichotomy of education. It also disrupted the ways that people who ran the schools had to negotiate here it sometimes they had to do funding issues of who would give them money if they did industrial education. They had to figure out how to tell a story that was going to appease the funders but also do this Holistic Education that they had in mind. Pursuing literacy, pursuing education from people who were supportive of what their admission was and then having education that could help the community at large. Free . Oes it mean to be it was personal. It was a personal freedom. What am ido with calling myself. They change their name. We saw that with Harriet Tubman who went to call herself harriet. They change their names, they took off the names of their and slavers and chose new names. Names like freeman. Recognizing their new status. Changed first names. They do not want to be called something. They changed it to something they wanted to be called. They changed their names to reflect their family groupings, who they were akin to and things like that. They also sought security of the body against violence. Against of the body policing that was happening in the communities. In the immediate aftermath of emancipation there were riots. Memphis has a riot. Three days were the assailants were policeman and Small Business owners. They killed about 48 black people and 70 to 80 more were injured. Black women were raped because of their connection to soldiers. This is a reflection of how Southern Society and communities were processing black men in uniform in the south and how reflecting the complete transformation of what Slave Society had been. There is this riot the way these people are killed. One of the ways that free people respond to this is by sort of pushing back against this culture of a semblance. This idea that was put forth by a historian where women, black women in particular would not talk about their lives, particularly around sexuality ause they had been so their bodies and sexuality had been so debased. Rather than talk about it publicly they would not talk about it so they would not be reflected upon that way. This instance they testified against congressional committees. We have some testimonials going on now. We may have a sense of what it means to testify in front of a big audio people who may or may not be supporting the story you are trying to tell. To these their stories committees. They wanted their stories to be told. They wanted to have justice for what they experience. Testimony that is telling stories and telling what happened so that they could pursue their personal freedom and protection for their bodies and protection for their families and themselves. And then also sort of recognizing themselves and their own names in who they want to be reflected upon as. What did it mean to be free . It meant familial freedom. It meant having their marriage is recognized by the federal government. There were instances of mass weddings. We talked earlier in the semester about how families were used as tools to discipline and to disrupt the lives of in slaved people. But emancipation is we can have our union and have them formally recognized by the government. So they pursued that. Whats interesting here as they pursued mass weddings, weddings and recognition, although this of forming only form family. But they also have these ideas with the missionary showing up. A good example of a woman in South Carolina who petitions to get her husbands pay. He is a soldier in the army. Its 1861 and she is petitioning to get recognition as his wife so she could also claim his pay so she could support the family. The federalre government is recognizing families, marriage in those relationships. Thatn take from that enslaved people have their own ideas about what it meant to be responsible to one another in these coveted relationships and they lifted out in emancipation. They had marriage is recognized by the federal government. Reconnecting with family was a key element of what it meant to be free. Some people traveled hundreds of miles to try to find family members, to reconnect with family members. They place ads in newspapers to find their people. They placed ads in these up untils for decades the turn of the 20th century. It was still they were still placing ads saying, i am wife,so, i last saw my husband, daughter, son, cousin, auntie here. There were owned by soandso. A provided all the information they could to try to reconnect their families. Decades upd this for until the turn of the 20th century to try to find their family members. But they also suffer the ravages of time and distance. Not every story meant that people were able to reconnect. They had extended kinship networks that they wanted to strengthen. People,instances of grandparents trying to take care of their grandchildren. Networks of people who had been living together without necessarily being married or biological families, but trying to gain control and support children another people. They had these extended kinship networks and they also had single femaleheaded households. Places where women were taking care of your children. This presented a challenge for the federalecause government did not always recognize women as heads of household. They used resolution to deal with any challenges they had in their families. They wanted to be separated from people. They want to access those researches. Resources. Thats a really robust picture of what freedom meant in terms of family. Reconnecting but could also mean reconfiguring. What does it mean to be free . That wetical freedom can see through places like the national friedman convention, which we talked about the antebellum time. Its darted around the time of the colonization and immigration debate in the 1830s. These were freeman conventions. There are still having these meanings, talk about what it means to be free. Aboutof times they talk voting, serving on juries, voting for local offices. When they start a craft out what freedom could mean. They talked about constitutional conventions and participating in them. The things that happen with a civil war was a reconstruction act that broke the south and to military districts and made it so that the states had to rewrite to conduct slavery and grant. Uffrage to friedman and these conventions they held office. Black men were elected to hold offices. A majority in louisiana and South Carolina. Places like virginia they want a majority but they did participate actively in the conversations about emancipation. They focus on education, race relations, they also talk about what it was that they wanted that did not coincide with emancipation. They also ty jerome about issues of gender and sexuality. Talk about marriage and interracial marriage but many are trying to protect black women from being violated by or by not having control of their bodies are being viewed in violent ways. To be free was to participate in the Political Landscape and to shape what the definition would be. What it meant to be free was religious. It meant exit is. It meant this idea of having independent freedom, but it also meant this moment of liberation that god brought about. For black folks are a christian they believe this was a moment of god acting on their behalf to liberate them from enslavement. That theyot to say were waiting for freedom, but they understood that god would bring about a transformation. A surge of black folks being converted to christianity and independent churches. We talked about how you and with the second great awakening there was not this largescale conversion among enslaved people but certainly by the time of emancipation. Those numbers start to climb an independent churches. You find there are churches created during emancipation in the first five to 10 years after emancipation. They create these independent churches and independent associations and independent denominations so he know in the antebellum time theres the ame time ame church. But in the south you have the apostolic church. Which is the First Independent southern denomination. Think or do you know if people converted to christianity because they were freed . Prof. Myers or what . Because before they were emancipated you said there was not a large amount of slaves who were christian. Do you think that because they were free they saw that as, ok, it would have to do with this . Prof. Myers i dont know that they necessarily thought it i have not seen documentation. That we ared us going to convert. I think it was a good representation of what faith could do. People could convert for that region and reason. But maybe it was a more practical element of people able to move about and make choices about where to worship and who to worship and how to worship. Ine people have not been religious community at all. The work of the independent association to actually carry out mission work among black folks is probably a significant component. They said, we are the people that are qualified to help the free people. Who better than us . We know black people ourselves. We know what black people need so we should be able to carry out this work. I think all of those elements, both realizing that this is the moment of god acting and people seeing that. People having the opportunity to choose for themselves and responding to the work of the convention and churches. Theres this moment of what it means to be free. Independent religious worship. It also had implications for womens leadership and power. Something that we see and saw and one of the readings is how women were playing key roles in forming religious communities. So much so that some of the planters were complaining about one of the women and the Worship Services she was holding. There were women playing Important Roles in religious communities. That goes through some changes over emancipation. The media emancipation has women playing key roles. We see that in petersburg, virginia with the Saint Stephens episcopal church. Which is one of the first black episcopal churches in virginia. Founded by a formerly enslaved black woman from north carolina. She works with one of the ministers there in st. Petersburg to start the church for formally enslaved black folks. Women are playing an Important Role in religious landscape of freedom. We have her reflecting the work of women convention. The Baptist Church that emerges at the end of the 19th century. Thinking of the question of what it meant to be free, geography and movement. Said there is no more need of hiding places to conceal. She is referring to her own experience. Hiding in her grandmothers attic in the small crawlspace were she could barely stand. There is no more need for that. Now free people can go where they want. And many do. Many migrate to cities in search of their family members, in search of freedom to be able to move their bodies. Some of them stayed on the plantations where they have labored as enslaved people. Some are waiting out and figuring out what did it mean, this transformation of emancipation and waiting to see what would happen and then some of them started to move from the plantation. And for other folks what did emancipation freedom . Ean were they represented in history . That is a good question about how as it reflected in the landscape of emancipation . That is an area of research where we talked about the issues around forced meeting among enslavement. This is another one of those areas at the leading edge of scholarship or people are doing research to uncover the lives of folks in statement. Project. A whole a few scholars are working on projects to uncover the stories. I think that is a scenario still unfolding. It is also the responsibilities. The landscape of freedom did not allow for Family Structures to be organized around same gender loving people. That said, there were lots of Family Structures that differed ofm that victorian model heteronormative model of a father and mother and their biological children. Free people had a married of structures of families because slaverys produce that in ways. They sometimes had units of women and children who live together and formed communities. Singleparent had households. That could be a father or mother and children. Theyre all different ways of forming family. Which is one of the ways you could see that. That was the institution had the christian normative ideals about men and women and thats how it was structured. Freewithin that framework people were disrupting what it meant to be families and be married. They had all kinds of ways to partnering. Who is a partner today not your partner tomorrow are trying up relationships. There was a myriad of ways. There was a lot of ways we could start to look for what that have been and try to uncover and read carefully and thoughtfully and asked the question. Thank you for the question. Thus the frontier of the research. Lastly you saw the return migration. Theyre returning to the places of enslavement as free people. Thats her we get a sense of Harriet Jacobs. Saying, sitting here in my grandmothers house reflecting on what it meant to be free and what it means to be free. She is writing about returning to a place where her family was buried. So many people fled and were able to emancipate themselves and they then came back to places where their families were buried. So places where they found their roots. Ways, this return to the places of emancipation, places of enslavement is how they made freedom meaningful and stayed safe by returning to those places to shape the landscape for freedom. The meaning of freedom, as you could see, was robust. Enslaved people and free people had a very robust sense of what it meant to be free and a lot of different ways of constructing it. But they laid the foundation for making a freedom meaningful. They laid the foundations and the conversations they had and the conversations between the former enslavers. They lay the foundations in their letters about the schools and in their pursuit of schools in the formation of schools. They lay the foundation for making freedom meaningful and so many ways through their activities and through their exchanges with various folks around that process. And in this moment we could say that emancipation marked new cultural moment. Religiously, socially, culturally, but there were things that were unimaginable at this moment that had been complicated in the antebellum time before the war. And so with freedom, with this idea of freedom, free people were able to go forward and start to create a new engagement with the institutions of this itntry in such a way that puts a challenge and some of those frameworks and tries to reconfigure them. Which would be the next question to consider. Freedom meant,t how did they make that freedom meaningful . That would be the next question to take up in our next section. I believe it therefore today. Unless there are questions. I can take questions if there are lingering questions. I believe it therefore today and i will see you next time. Thanks. You can watch lectures in history every weekend on American History tv. We take you inside College Classrooms to learn about topics ranging from the American Revolution to 9 11. That saturday at 8 00 p. M. And midnight eastern on cspan3. You are watching American History tv, covering history cspan tile style. Lectures inl films, College Classrooms and visits to museums and historic places. All weekend, every weekend on cspan3. This sunday on american artifacts, we toured reconstructed world war ii u. S. Army airborne barracks. Here is a preview. If you think of a vehicle from world war ii you are thinking of a jeep. Here is a 1945. Tohas been restored nearly the condition that it rolled off the factory floor with. These things were outstanding designs. It was designed by bantam which has a contract and ford made these as well. They were designed for an 18yearold out of high school to fix the hand tools using early emmanuel. These things were very simple. My zero turn our home is more complicated than this. It is very simple to work on. That is why they are so popular today. These engines and this design was build up until the early 1970s. The french france maybes for the french army. It is always a huge attraction to have a jeep around. Torive minor around town different places to keep it running. People are always glad to see it and people are always waving. These things are incredible. An incredible design that they came up with. They try to drown my motor. My ignition was set too high for that. To break my back on roller coaster roads. When i held together if the army and i might somehow get along because they gave me a nickname. From the general purpose it took the g and the peak. They called me cheap. It sounded more like a jeep. It sounded more like a noise. Studebaker made these. We call these a weasel. These were great for snow. These were amphibious. It could actually swim. Been pretty well restored but there is plenty of work to do on it. The owner of this one has three hethese in which he said needed three of them to keep them running. They were used to transport troops out. Bold, these, in the things were vital. They would run these up to the front line. They would run ammunition up. It was the only way they could quickly get the wounded out of the battlefield because the snow was so deep at that time. Even deepwater is no obstacle. This baby can swim. One word of caution. The weasel is not this. In choppy to operated water youre asking for this. This is called jump master personal inspection. Basically he would come up and check from head to tell to make sure nothing is twisted to make sure nothing is broken. There is another final check. This time by the jump master. Just before the men go aboard. Watch the full program this sunday at 6 00 p. M. Eastern on american artifacts, here on American History tv. Weeknights this month we are featuring American History tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan three. Tuesday, Smithsonian Associates with kermit roosevelt, a constitutional law professor and a great great grandson of the at. His talk is titled the constitution and declaration of independence. A contrary view of how failures and reinventions of the country have led to our modern core values. American history tv, this weekend, every weekend on cspan3. Book, captives of liberty prisoners of war and the politics of vengeance in the American Revolution history professor t. Cole jones illustrates inhumane conditions inside 18thcentury prison camps and examines how the Continental Congress dealt with the problem of thousands of pows, a population that sometimes outnumbered the american army. Next, professor jones discusses his book at the American Revolution institute of the society of the cincinnati. Dir. Mccallister clark good evening, everyone. Its so nice to see you here this evening. So many good old friends and new faces. I am ellen mccallister clark, the Library Director at the American Revolution institute of the society of cincinnati. It is my very special pleasure tonight to be the one to introduce t. Cole jones, who will be speaking to