I Can't Wait to Call You My Wife African American Letters of Love and Family in the Civil War Era

Rita Roberts, Robin Miles

eAudio - 2023

Against the backdrop of bloody battles and political maneuvering, thousands of African Americans spent the Civil War trying to hold their families together. Whether enslaved or free, they strove not only to survive but also to cultivate bonds of family, friendship, and community. This moving book illuminates that struggle through the letters exchanged by African Americans before, during, and just after the war. Despite harsh laws against literacy and brutal practices that broke apart black families, people found ways to write to each other against all odds. Their letters reveal humanity's ability to endure extraordinary hardship.In these pages, readers will meet parents who are losing hope of ever seeing their children again and a husb...and who walks fifteen miles to visit his wife, enslaved on a different plantation. The collection also includes tender courtship letters exchanged between Lewis Henry Douglass and Helen Amelia Loguen, both children of noted abolitionists, and... more