This book is a perfect introduction to its subject for undergraduate students. Interwoven as it is with larger questions of race and masculinity, military organization and professionalism, and nationalism and citizenship students will be introduced to the complexities that surrounded emancipation and the meanings of freedom and the war.
David Carlson Civil War Book Review This brief and useful ... Read morestudy synthesizes a welter of important scholarship on race, soldiering, emancipation, and the quest for citizenship by African Americans... Besides analyzing experiences of African American, Luke and Smith expertly explain civil war Army life and the soldier's craft. Choice In Soldiering for Freedom... independent scholar Bob Luke and historian John D. Smith attempt not to break new ground, but to familiarize a wide readership with the findings of current scholarship on black soldiers in the Union Army. For the most part, their succinct book admirably achieves this aim.
Donald R. Shaffer Michigan War Studies Review Detailed introduction to this important topic.
Kathryn Shively Meier North Carolina Historical Review ... There is much to admire in Soldiering for Freedom. Luke and Smith have produced an account of wide potential interest for a diverse readership. They combine sound research with a lucid writing style, free of jargon, and uncluttered by digressions into the debates and trends in Civil War literature. The Journal of African American History Show Less