Kelly Jones explores emancipation by illuminating the intersection of several processes in wartime and the postwar decades such as Black women’s social and family networks and their struggle to claim their rights in connection to the service of their men. Using the records connected to the 54th United States Colored Infantry (the other 54th—not the 54th Massachusetts of “Glory” fame), Jones reconstruct the geography of USCT women’s family, work, and society in the post–Civil War years, paying closest attention to the twenty-five years after the war. Emphasizing Black women’s political placemaking during and after the war’s refugee crisis, Jones argues that Black women provided support for their soldiers and the US Army presence overall, but they also constituted part of the occupation force of Arkansas’s capital. They formed the backbone of Unionist Little Rock and forged alliances with White progressive allies. They fought for rootedness, gaining unprecedented control over their domestic lives, and claimed privileges via their association with Black soldiers.

With Lincoln having issued preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, Unionists in Tennessee and southern Louisiana undertake to organize congressional elections so as to gain exclusion from the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. Lincoln encourages southern Unionists – and provides them military assistance – in their efforts. Lincoln’s Annual Message in December 1862 puts forward compensated abolition plan, providing for abolition in the rebellious states. Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation, but exclusion of Tennessee and southern Louisiana do not comport with specifications in the preliminary version. Exclusions will provide opportunity for proslavery Unionists to salvage slavery, but proclamation also raises issue of how fate of slavery will factor into restoring rebellious states to the Union.

The Federal Red River campaign of spring 1864 is a military and political disaster, casting a pall over Louisiana’s constitutional convention and the inauguration of Arkansas’s Unionist government. Federal forces ostensibly control most of Arkansas, but such control tenuous in places, and the Arkansas government encounters much resistance to its authority. The Louisiana constitutional convention crafts a free-state constitution, but conservative Unionists contest it relentlessly, and the large majority of free-state delegates oppose black political and legal equality. The organization of a free-state government and constitution in Tennessee remains on hold, although Andrew Johnson nominated as Lincoln’s running-mate in the 1864 election. Confederate atrocities against black Union troops at Poison Spring and Marks’ Mill, Arkansas, and at Fort Pillow in Tennessee underscore the determination to preserve slavery.

The Union capture of Atlanta in early September 1864 reframes the presidential election and the war. Louisiana’s free-state constitution wins voter approval and becomes operative, formally abolishing slavery in Louisiana, although military–civilian conflict continues to hamper the Unionist government. Free-state radicals and black leaders call for political and legal equality, but the Louisiana government takes no action in defining black freedom. The Arkansas Unionist government faces difficulties in asserting its authority, and it receives limited assistance from Federal military officials. In Tennessee, free-state and conservative Unionists offer competing plans for the state to conduct a presidential election, and black Tennesseans in Nashville hold their own election, but Tennessee’s electoral votes ultimately not counted. Andrew Johnson delivers “Moses of the Colored Man” speech during the campaign, affirming commitment to abolition. Republican support for the Thirteenth Amendment muted during the campaign, but Lincoln wins reelection.

The lower Mississippi valley, as a distinct geopolitical region, is representative of the antebellum South. Arkansas and Tennessee represents the upper South and Louisiana and Mississippi the lower South. The region demonstrates much geographical diversity, but the main division is between the alluvial areas, where plantation agriculture and large slaveholdings predominate, and the uplands, which feature farming and small-scale slaveholding. The 1.16 million slaves of the region constitute more than a third of the Confederacy’s slave population. The slaveholders of the antebellum South are a distinct elite, especially in the lower Mississippi valley. The slave populations of the region also engender complex communities and a vibrant cultural life. Other than the South Carolina lowcountry and the Chesapeake, the lower Mississippi valley achieves the highest stage of historical development as a slave society within the antebellum South.

Under Andrew Johnson’s policy, Mississippi begins process of Reconstruction, while governments of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana extend and solidify their authority. Freedpeople mobilize and organize to articulate and instantiate freedom, underscored by black convention in Nashville in August 1865 that calls for political and legal equality. Mississippi Reconstruction convention in August is the first such convention held by unreconstructed state under Johnson’s policy. Convention highlighted by acrimonious debate over abolition of slavery. Some delegates express view – articulated by conservative Unionists – that Emancipation Proclamation had only freed slaves but had not abolished slavery, and that Mississippi is under no obligation to abolish slavery as a condition of restoration to the Union. Mississippi abolishes slavery, but process bodes ill for Johnson’s policy.

The organization of loyal governments on a free-state basis in Tennessee and Arkansas during early 1864. Unionists in Arkansas hold a constitutional convention in January and draft a state constitution prohibiting slavery. Despite logistical challenges, constitution gains approval by voters in Union-held Arkansas in March. In Tennessee, Andrew Johnson formulates plan to hold local elections before holding a state constitutional convention. Johnson’s plan includes a loyalty oath that imposes stricter requirements for voting than Lincoln’s ten-percent plan. Local elections take place and officials began assuming office, but the unsettled military situation in the state forces postponement of the plan to hold a state constitutional convention.

Contests between free-state and conservative Unionists in Tennessee and Louisiana continue through summer 1863. Tennessee conservatives conduct a gubernatorial convention that Lincoln refuses to recognize. Despite Lincoln’s rejection, Louisiana conservatives also plan elections for the fall, while free-state Unionists – despite Lincoln’s support – encounter various challenges. Free-state Unionism arises in Arkansas after Federal capture of Little Rock in September 1863. In North, debate over Reconstruction intensifies after Federal victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, and antislavery advocates warn against any reunion that does not require rebellious states to abolish slavery in state constitutions, else slavery may survive war. Northern debate over Reconstruction intersects with contest between free-state and conservative Unionists in Louisiana and Tennessee.

The secession crisis of 1860-61 in the lower Mississippi valley represents the crisis in the South as a whole. Secession is more contentious, and southern Unionism more prevalent, in Arkansas and Tennessee than in Louisiana and Mississippi. Support for secession initially corresponds to areas of plantation agriculture and large slaveholdings, but the Confederacy receives overwhelming white support after secession. Events outside the region shape the Union’s initial approach to the rebellion and to the problem of fugitive slaves, though the region also experiences internal disruptions in mobilizing for war. The lower Mississippi valley initially experiences little direct effect from the war, but control of the Mississippi River soon becomes central to Union strategy. By early 1862, preparations were underway for Federal incursions into the region. Although the issue of slavery becomes unavoidable, notions of “Reconstruction” remain limited, and few Northerners envision a reunion predicated on the abolition of slavery.

It took three tries for Arkansas to make the change from partisan to nonpartisan elections. Twice, in 1970 and 1980, proposals for revising the state constitution that included changing to nonpartisan judicial elections were rejected by the voters. By 1999, when yet a third proposal was authorized by the legislature, Republican strength in the state had increased substantially. However, there were many more Democrats running for judicial office than Republicans. Because, historically, primary elections were entirely the responsibility of the parties, the parties set and collected filing fees from candidates running in their party primaries. Filing fees from judicial candidates constituted a significant source of revenue for the Democratic Party but not for the Republican Party. The combination of Democratic concerns that Republicans would start winning an increasing share of judicial offices and the Republican desire to deprive the Democratic Party of the revenue from filing fees paid by large numbers of judicial candidates provided the motivation for the legislature to pass and send to the voters another amendment changing to nonpartisan elections.