"Sanctuary"

President Lincoln had been ambivalent about ending slavery. "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union," he said in his inaugural address of 1860, "and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union."

Yet ultimately he did end slavery, and African-Americans everywhere rejoiced at the prospect and embraced the Republican Party. For those who had been enslaved, freedom brought the ability to make choices about how they would look, act, work, live, and be. Some former slaves found themselves homeless, jobless, and without clothes or shelter. Many froze to death in the bitterly cold winter that followed the end of the Civil War. Still, freedom meant autonomy, the ability to travel, and the right to refuse to take orders from or pay obeisance to whites.

Freedmen, laboring on a wharf.

Freed people regarded surnames as a sign of respect, and began choosing their own last names. When they chose the last names of their masters, it was more out of convenience than out of any affection for the master. When one black soldier was asked, "Do you want to be called by your old master's name?" he replied: "No sur, I don't. I's had 'nuff o' ole massa."

Four million people moved through the process of choosing jobs, building institutions, and raising families. They negotiated terms with the Union Army, the Freedman's bureau, southern whites and landowners, southern governments, Congress, religious bodies, and the Ku Klux Klan. All of these groups had a stake in defining what freedom would mean for blacks - where it would be expanded and what its limits would be.

They came out of slavery with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the faith in their hearts that tomorrow would be a brighter day. They had already survived the darkest nights of bondage.