Book Signing By William B. Gould Iv Author

[Luke_Wilbur]

Event: Book signing by William B. Gould IV author of Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Diary of a Black Sailor

When: Thursday, February 10, 2005 @ 6:30pm

Where: African American Civil War Museum, First Floor True Reformer Building,

1200 U Street NW, Washington, DC 20009

For more info contact: Frank Smith or Hari Jones (202) 667-2667

 

In September of 1862, William Benjamin Gould escaped from slavery by rowing to the U.S.S. Cambridge, a Union gunboat patrolling of the coast of Wilmington, North Carolina. He served in the United States navy for the remainder of the Civil War and left a diary of his experiences – one of the only three know diaries of African American sailors from the period. It is distinguished not only by its details and eloquent tone, but also by its author’s reflections on the conduct of the war, on his own military engagements, on race, on race relations in the Navy, and on what African Americans might expect after the war during Reconstruction.

 

William B. Gould IV, a professor of law at Stanford University, has provided introductory chapters establishing the context of the diary narrative, an annotated version of the diary, a brief account of Gould’s life in Massachusetts after the war, and his thoughts about the legacy of his great-grandfather and his own journey of discovery in learning about this remarkable man.