Free Talk Live

How the end of slavery led to starvation and death for millions of black Americans - Hundreds of thousands of slaves freed during the American civil war died from disease and hunger after being liberated, according to a new book. The analysis, by historian Jim Downs of Connecticut College, casts a shadow over one of the most celebrated narratives of American history, which sees the freeing of the slaves as a triumphant righting of the wrongs of a southern plantation system that kept millions of black Americans in chains. But, as Downs shows in his book, Sick From Freedom, the reality of emancipation during the chaos of war and its bloody aftermath often fell...