Campfires of freedom

the long version

Monash University (Australia) history professor Keith P. Wilson outlines three broad purposes in writing his new book on the camp life of the American Civil War's United States Colored Troops (USCT): "to describe the soldiers' lives ... to bring into focus the emotional texture of military life ... [and] to analyze the process of cultural change that occurred within the army camps" (xiii). Why camp life? As Wilson states, camp life helped the African-American, "divided from the mainstream of American cultural life," to "bridge this divide, and to negotiate the changes necessary to meet the demands of army life ... to reconfigure race relations and give black people a new definition ... to challenge existing notions of race and relationship." (211). In exploring these issues, Wilson achieves his purposes quite well.