economic opportunities severely limited by their slavery. In addition, of course, family life, religious observance, education, and culture in general were constrained by slavery. Still, the very fact that it was so difficult to practice so many of the normal aspects of life, only served to make them more desirable. Research has increasingly shown, for example, that "the absence of legal terms favorable to slave family formation and maintenance did not preclude a strong sense of family." This, and all aspects of slave culture were, of course, carried into freedom following emancipation. Thus, while slavery did signify "a sharp legal break, its ending did not create so sharp a cultural break" as earlier historians assumed.
This was partly because, during the war, the breakdown of the slave system was gradual. "Slavery eroded, plantation by plantation, often slave by slave, like slabs of earth slipping into a Southern stream." The coming of war, followed by the Emancipation Proclamation, and, by 1865, the Confederacy's own arming of black men w
...