SHARON ROMEO is an associate professor of history and classics at the University of Alberta.

This is a landmark book. Rather than simply resulting from the work of lawmakers who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction, the concept of ‘citizenship’ emerged out of the innumerable actions carried out by African Americans in the slaveholding states during the Civil War. Romeo shows that in war-torn Missouri, black women petitioned Union officers for their freedom, filed lawsuits against their former owners in military courts, and claimed widows’ pensions after the deaths of their veteran husbands. By documenting black women’s activism in a state where the Emancipation Proclamation did not even apply, Romeo forces us to re-examine precisely how and why constitutional and legal change occurred during this period.

SHARON ROMEO is an associate professor of history and classics at the University of Alberta.

This is a landmark book. Rather than simply resulting from the work of lawmakers who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction, the concept of ‘citizenship’ emerged out of the innumerable actions carried out by African Americans in the slaveholding states during the Civil War. Romeo shows that in war-torn Missouri, black women petitioned Union officers for their freedom, filed lawsuits against their former owners in military courts, and claimed widows’ pensions after the deaths of their veteran husbands. By documenting black women’s activism in a state where the Emancipation Proclamation did not even apply, Romeo forces us to re-examine precisely how and why constitutional and legal change occurred during this period.

SHARON ROMEO is an associate professor of history and classics at the University of Alberta.

This is a landmark book. Rather than simply resulting from the work of lawmakers who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment during Reconstruction, the concept of ‘citizenship’ emerged out of the innumerable actions carried out by African Americans in the slaveholding states during the Civil War. Romeo shows that in war-torn Missouri, black women petitioned Union officers for their freedom, filed lawsuits against their former owners in military courts, and claimed widows’ pensions after the deaths of their veteran husbands. By documenting black women’s activism in a state where the Emancipation Proclamation did not even apply, Romeo forces us to re-examine precisely how and why constitutional and legal change occurred during this period.