Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

And welcome to a new year, our first proper episode of the New Year.

Happy New Year to everyone.

And let's go to the new year of 1863, where January 1st brought a monumental political development, the Emancipation

Proclamation. Abraham Lincoln declaring that all enslaved people in the rebellious southern

states should henceforth be free. Of course, the implications of this are enormous. We've touched on all

sorts of elements and wrinkles and fallout from the Emancipation Proclamation on this show.

One specific element is that it also allowed black men to join the Union Army.

That story is fairly well recounted.

Of course, there's that movie Glory, which tells the story of one of the first black infantry units.

And no surprise, it is a little more complicated of a story

than that feel-good heroic tale that showed up in a movie like that.

For one, black soldiers who escaped slavery and joined the army

found the conditions within the army to be coercive, racist, and exploitative,

and many of them ended up leaving the army to take care of family,

escape abuse, and for other reasons.

And that dynamic is the subject of a new book from Jonathan Landy, who is assistant professor of history at Purdue.

The book is called Freedom Soldiers, The Emancipation of Black Soldiers in Civil War camps, courts, and prisons.

Professor Landy, Jonathan, welcome to the show.

First guest of 2025.

No one can take that away from you.

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