Searching for Freedom after the Civil War

"Searching for Freedom is well-written and thoroughly researched. Its ambitious dissection of the manifold concept of freedom is illuminating and rewarding."
—The Alabama Review

"Hubbs’s volume is informative. The preface, introduction, and four chapters illustrate many issues related to Alabama’s first Reconstruction. The epilogue makes it plain that some issues, most notably race and ethnicity, spanned the state’s Second Reconstruction (the modern civil rights movement) and continue to divide its citizenry during Third Reconstruction. Put another way, certain people in Alabama are still searching for freedom 150 years after the Civil War. Whether they will find it remains the state’s greatest challenge."
—The Journal of Southern History

“Hubbs deftly demonstrates that a crude woodcut image from a nearly forgotten local newspaper can lead us, if we will examine it closely, toward a fuller understanding of individuals, their antecedents, and their interconnected times during this fascinating and pivotal era in American history.”
—Paul M. Pruitt Jr., author of Taming Alabama: Lawyers and Reformers, 1804–1929

“In a marvelously original approach for studying Reconstruction, Guy Hubbs takes an iconic political cartoon and uncovers the fascinating story behind it. But more than that, he uses four strikingly different characters to offer a deeply thoughtful meditation on the multiple meanings of freedom during one of the most tortuous and difficult periods of American history. This book dissects the fundamental values of another era, but the beliefs espoused by Arad Lakin, Noah B. Cloud, Ryland Randolph, and Shandy Jones resonate into our own time.”
—George C. Rable, author of God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War