Self-Emancipating Women, Civil War, and the Union Army in Southern Louisiana and Lowcountry Georgia, 1861–1865

This essay focuses on African American women's self-emancipatory actions and the socially-created meanings, relationships, and identities organized around definitions of womanhood using a comparative study of two regions, southern Louisiana and Lowcountry Georgia, that provide an important window into understanding the commonalities and diverse experiences of two coastal areas where African American freedom and labor became contested issues after the arrival of Union forces along the coast of both regions in 1862, followed by a sustained campaign to capture the key cities of Shreveport, Louisiana, and Savannah, Georgia.