| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 93.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

On Jordan's Banks: Emancipation and Its Aftermath in the Ohio River Valley. By Darrel E. Bigham. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. x, 428 pp. $45.00, ISBN 0-8131-2366-6.)
In On Jordan's Banks, Darrel E. Bigham addresses a gap in both the history of the Ohio River valley and our understanding of emancipation and its consequences in the upper South. Bigham notes that most scholarship has focused on the economic development of the largest cities on the river and offers little on the countryside. African Americans have made slight appearance in these works, and it is his goal to fill that void.	1
Bigham's focus is on the Ohio River counties—twenty-five in Kentucky and twenty-five in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio—and the range of experiences of African Americans in those counties during the years following the Civil War. Bigham begins with a brief analysis of antebellum life along the river, noting that blacks on the free side of the Ohio were severely limited in their occupations, housing, civil rights, and access to education. Although the labor force was free, the color line was rigid, and African Americans struggled, often in small numbers, to improve their condition. In part 2, Bigham offers an in-depth discussion of the Civil War's impact on the region. That analysis is particularly strong, especially in its treatment of the problem of "contrabands," both above and below the Ohio.	. . .

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