Bitter Fruits of Bondage: The Demise of Slavery and the Collapse of the Confederacy, 1861-1865

For many years before his untimely death in 1995, Armstead L. Robinson was the director of the Carter G. Woodson Institute for Afro-American and African Studies as well as professor of history at the University of Virginia, a pioneer in bringing the scholarly study of African American history to the mainstream of American history. Slaveholders demanded secession after Abraham Lincoln's 1860 election and seized the reins of power, enacting class legislation like the so-called "Twenty Negro" law that exempted from military service one white for every twenty slaves.