I’ve been taking pretty careful notes for the first few chapters, but today I was reading “The General Strike” and “The Coming of the Lord” (Chapters 4 and 5) and I got caught up in the narrative.

“The General Strike” substantiates DuBois’ thesis that the decisive thing in the Civil War was the defection of the 3.5 million slaves from the Confederate side to the Union side.  This was an unorchestrated spontaneous defection, a true “general strike”.  At first the Union troops returned the slaves who crossed over to the Union lines to their owners, but it was senseless: why return labor to the enemy in order to allow more white Confederate soldiers to go to the front lines?

“The Coming of the Lord” discusses the transition from mere defection of slaves to active military service by freedmen on the Union side.  There are some horrific and inspiring stories of Black units in combat.  Unbelievable stuff.

DuBois wrote this book in the 1930’s.  It’s worth reading today for the same reason it was worth reading then: it addresses a very relevant and very deep historical wrong: Reconstruction was a noble experiment in real democracy that failed because the majority in America lost its nerve.  Very relevant today.