Former slaves struggled to begin their free life and up to one million died or got sick.
Challenges the accepted wisdom of the Unionist North being sympathetic to the cause of freed slaves.
Whole families returned to work on the plantations they had left.
The end of slavery in the United States led to anarchy and the deaths of hundreds of thousands of black Americans claims a new revisionist history of the Civil War.
Instead of a granting former slaves a glorious moment of freedom, President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation condemned millions to a life of disease and hunger says historian Jim Downs in his new book, 'Sick from Freedom'.
Scouring through obscure records, Professor Downs has revealed that freed slaves were subject to outbreaks of cholera and smallpox as they attempted to start new lives for themselves and that thousands starved to death.
Calling this 'the largest biological crisis of the 19th century', Downs states that this tragedy has failed to be acknowledged because it does not match with the rosy view of the Civil War being a fight between the Unionist North and Confederate South for God-given rights.
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