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mods: Happy dreams of liberty an American family in slavery and freedom Morales, R. Isabela creator author. text bibliography biography Electronic books. Biographies History Biographies. Biographies. nyu 2022 2022 monographic eng remote 1 online resource (xii, 319 pages) : illustrations (black and white, and colour) "When Samuel Townsend died at his home in Madison County, Alabama, in November 1856, the white cotton planter left behind hundreds of slaves and an estate worth approximately $200,000. In life, Samuel had done little to distinguish himself from other members of the South's slaveholding elite. But he made a name for himself in death by leaving his fortune to his five sons, four daughters, and two nieces: all of them enslaved. Happy Dreams of Liberty is the story of these former slaves, a mixed-race family that migrated across the American West and South in the second half of the nineteenth century. Searching for communities where they could enjoy their freedom and wealth to the fullest, the Townsends homesteaded in Ohio and Kansas, fought for the Union Army in Mississippi, mined for silver in the Colorado Rockies, and, in the case of one son, returned to Alabama to purchase a part of the old plantation where he had once been enslaved. Their travels map a landscape of opportunity and oppression where meanings of race and freedom, as well as concrete opportunities for social and economic mobility, were dictated by highly local circumstances. During the turbulent period between the Civil War and the rise of Jim Crow at the turn of the twentieth century, the Townsends carved out spaces where they were able to benefit from their money and mixed-race ancestry, pass down generational wealth, and pursue their dreams of advancement and equality"--Publisher's description. Introduction -- 1. This Happy, Free, and Flourishing Country -- 2. The Strangest Will He Ever Knew a Sensible Man to Make -- 3. Where Shall the Free Negro Go? -- 4. I Ain't Satisfied Here at All -- 5. S…