Enslaved people anticipated emancipation before it legally arrived

Evidence

The outbreak of the Civil War in the spring of 1861, however, likely jeopardized Margaret’s balance sheet, as the value of enslaved people plummeted. But there was the other side of the ledger to consider, namely how the enslaved now thought about the future. The promise of emancipation was no longer limited to daydreams: It now seemed not only possible but probable. “All the slaves in the South think they will be freed soon, even those in this neighborhood,” Lieutenant Benjamin F. Fisher of the US Signal Corps at Georgetown declared that fall. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 66

Categorization

• XREF: Shows enslaved people acting on their own expectations of freedom — a continuation of the theme that enslaved agency, not only federal policy, drove emancipation. — connects to: Enlightenment abolitionists warned that emancipation had to precede and preempt slave revolt — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 210; Enslaved men liberated themselves once the Civil War began — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 67; Enslaved people revolted rather than wait for masters’ opinions to change. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 372
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Enlightenment abolitionists warned that emancipation had to precede and preempt slave revolt — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 210; Enslaved men liberated themselves once the Civil War began — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations: How Building a…, 67; Enslaved people revolted rather than wait for masters’ opinions to change. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning: The…, 372