Book Talk: Donald S. Frazier on his new book “Blood on the Bayou: Vicksberg, Port Huron, and the Trans-Mississippi”

Courtesy of State House Press

Historian, professor, and award-winning author Donald Frazier recasts a well-known story of the struggle for control of the Mississippi in the American Civil War as a contest for control of the Confederacy’s African-American populations. Although Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves in 1863, the task of moving these liberated people into the Union and making use of their labor in the war effort fell to the Federal army and navy. Frazier’s book shows how the campaign to reduce Rebel forts west of the river also involved the creation of a black army of occupation and a remaking of the social and political landscape of Louisiana and the nation. Free and open to the public; no reservations required. A book signing will follow the event.