The Civil War Confiscation Acts

Download or read book The Civil War Confiscation Acts written by John Syrett and published by Fordham Univ Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.