Book Description

The Confiscation Acts were designed to sanction slave holding states by authorizing the Federal Government to seize rebel properties and grant freedom to slaves who fought with or worked for the Confederate military. In the first full account in more than twenty years of them, John Syrett examines the political contexts of the Acts, especially the debates in Congress, and demonstrates how the failure of the confiscation acts during the war presaged the political and structural shortcomings of Reconstruction after the war.