After freedom, there were many realities, scenarios, and imaginings. Mostly, there were just questions that would soon be answered. How would families like the Qualls-Harper-Payton-Colemans and the parents of the Sunflower Seven – those examined in this work – climb, and under what conditions, if any, would their subsequent generations thrive? Would the compromises made in a rural Slave Republic continue to distort the pursuit of a more egalitarian union? In the pockets of our nation where anti-slavery movements had formed, would new appeals for African Americans’ full citizenship mobilize the once enslaved and their descendants and provide moral, social, and ethical guardrails, not just political and economic ones?