Landscapes of Freedom

by Rebecca Capobianco Toy

ISBN: 9781643365923

Published: 2025-07-10

Revelations of the profound effect and long legacy of America's post-Civil War Reconstruction In Landscapes of Freedom, Rebecca Capobianco Toy tells the story of an emblematic community of freedpeople during the Civil War era. Some of the earliest acts of wartime emancipation happened in the Tidewater of Virginia, where enslaved people voted with their feet and escaped the Confederacy by crossing into US Army lines. At Yorktown, Virginia, freedpeople developed their own self-governing enclave near (and in some cases on) the Revolutionary War battlefield. Toy describes that Black community, its formation, and its development well into the twentieth century. She traces the effect of Reconstruction policy and the consequences that its subsequent rollback had on the lives of Black citizens. Toy also documents the Black community's attempts to commemorate its members' role in the Civil War. The Black community fought to retain that memory, one that challenged not only the Lost Cause...