The history of the American Civil War has long been a story about the enduring power of the ideals for which the United States was founded. In the wake of the war, popular understandings of the conflict turned on questions about the collapse of slavery and the emancipation of four million African Americans, as something the nation bestowed upon a grateful race. The reality that lay hidden behind this understanding, however, is much more interesting. Tracing the involvement of African Americans in the war can tell us a lot, not only about the experiences of enslaved peoples, but the second republic they hoped to build once the war was over.

Dr Erik Mathisen is a historian of the nineteenth century, with a focus on the United States but with research interests in the history of slavery, emancipation and working people in the broader Atlantic World. He teaches on the history of the United States, the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, and the history of Atlantic slavery.