Black and on the Border

The civil war is often understood in terms of stark oppo¬sites. It seems only natural to think of North and South, of Union and Confederacy, of freedom and slavery. But the habit of thinking in opposites often extends to other parts of the war where it serves us less well: battlefield and homefront, soldier and civilian, male and female, and black and white, as if these places, people, and ex¬periences were not swept up in the same all-consuming war