A New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and the Freedmen's RightsA New Birth of Freedom: The Republican Party and Freedmen's Rights, 1861 1866, is an account of how laws, policies and constitutional amendments defining and protecting the personal liberty and civil rights of the country's African American population were adopted during the Civil War. A study in legal and constitutional history, it complements and forms a necessary predicate to the social history of emancipation that is the principal focus of