Skilled freedmen working at the Union army’s carpenter shops in Beaufort, South Carolina, ca. 1860s, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Unit Two: Freed Slaves Mobilize describes how freed slaves organized after emancipation to assert their own visions of freedom, labor structures, and social order. Their actions in different areas were often influenced by demographic and geographic contexts as well as community activism. The Unit Two educational documents listed on the left feature excerpts of various primary source documents and first hand accounts that provide in depth insights into the mobilization activities of freed slaves in North and South Carolina.