R. ISABELA MORALES, PH.D.
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In the Archives

What is a "Civil War book"?

9/7/2023

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I got a big surprise this summer when I learned that the Society of Civil War Historians had named Happy Dreams of Liberty the winner of their 2023 Tom Watson Brown Book Award. Part of the surprise came from the fact that this is an award for "the best book published on the causes, conduct, and effects, broadly defined, of the Civil War," and I hadn't really thought of my book as a Civil War story.

Happy Dreams of Liberty focuses on the lives of the Townsend family under slavery, through their emancipation in 1860 (shortly before the Civil War), and in their struggle for freedom and equality across the country in the decades after. One of the Townsends, Charles Osborne, did enlist in the Union Army during the war, but he served as a clerk and quartermaster in Union-occupied Vicksburg for just a year. His experience of wartime wasn't blood and battles; it was paperwork and patrol duty. The other Townsends spent the war farming, teaching, marrying, and raising families. The war itself takes up only a few pages in the entire book. 
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"Marriage of a Colored Soldier at Vicksburg," Harper's Weekly, 20 June 1866. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The illustration above depicts a Freedmen's Bureau chaplain marrying an African American soldier and his bride. Processing paperwork for legal marriages -- which were denied enslaved people -- would have been one of Charles Osborne Townsend's tasks as a clerk in Vicksburg.

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Celebrating the "small stories"

9/7/2023

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Last February, I was honored to receive the The Huntington Library's 2023 Shapiro Book Prize for the best first book in American history and culture. Often, the "big" histories (sweeping national narratives and presidential biographies) are the books that get the most attention. For the prize jury to recognize the significance of the enslaved family's story at the heart of Happy Dreams of Liberty is an immense honor and a validation of all the "small" stories out there that expand our understanding of what -- and who -- count as important pieces of American history.

You can check out the public lecture I gave at the Huntington in February on YouTube.
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Introducing the blog

9/6/2023

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​In May 2022, I published my first book, Happy Dreams of Liberty: An American Family in Slavery and Freedom. Since then, I've been thrilled to share the story of the Townsend family at book talks across the country, seminars, and podcasts. Now I finally have a blog (...and it only took 16 months)!

I'll be here with news about Happy Dreams of Liberty as well as info on my new book project -- a true crime story from the Deep South -- so stay tuned. You can also find me on my public Facebook page @risabelamorales.author or on Threads @risabelamorales
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    Award-winning author and historian of slavery R. Isabela Morales

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