After Hiwassee came out in 1996, my satisfaction in having published a first novel dealing with my lifelong interest, the American Civil War, was tempered by a feeling that in the book I had failed to come to grips with the central issue of the conflict. In Hiwassee I told the story of a family of southern Appalachian slaveholders, the Madison Curtises, beset by wartime trials. But I made no attempt to explore the complex moral and ethical questions that necessarily arose from their practice of holding other human beings in bondage.

In the spring of 1996 I began to work on the Hiwassee sequel which became Freedom’s Altar. The book was to be set in the post-Civil War period of Reconstruction, after the defeat of the Confederacy and the emancipation of the slaves, when Southern whites and blacks were struggling to adjust to startlingly new social and economic realities. I felt that in doing this book I could not hope to say much about the effects of slavery without introducing a former slave as a major character, to interact as a freedman with the whites who had formerly owned him.

This was a daunting prospect. As a North Carolinian bearing my due portion of liberal white Southern guilt, I very much doubted not only my ability but also my right to try to get inside the heart and soul of a black person. But fortunately a dear friend gave me an invaluable piece of advice: “Don’t think of it as writing about a black man or a white man,” she said. “Think of it as writing about a human being.”

It is sad but true that today we do not often think of race-charged matters like the slavery experience in human terms, but rather as opportunities for the exercise of political argument. We impose our twentieth-century values on the past and imagine the roles of master and slave in stark terms of rank oppression and utter powerlessness. But to do this robs the slavery experience of the ambiguity and complexity that made it the immeasurable tragedy it was.

In Freedom’s Altar, the planter Judge Madison Curtis has been a kindly, lenient, and enlightened master; he prides himself on having treated his former slave Black Gamaliel almost as a son. But when Gamaliel returns to the Curtis farm after the war-calling himself Daniel McFee, his rightful name—the judge must come to see how wrong slavery was even in its most benign form, and Daniel must find a way to forgive his former master the unforgivable trespass of having held him as a chattel. They must grapple with strong emotions of love and hate, resentment and sympathy, fear and pride, remembrance and forgiveness. Each must find, and pay, the cost of freedom—from bondage on the one hand and from guilt on the other.

I have always thought the most cruel aspect of slavery was when masters were kind like Judge Curtis and slaves like Daniel McFee were well treated yet still held as property, when the delights of freedom seemed tantalizingly near but were still withheld, and when love—yes, real love—could blossom between black and white yet rarely be openly acknowledged. My aim in Freedom’s Altar was to tell a simple story of how human beings, black and white, formerly mired in an inhuman dilemma, sought to win their humanity back.

I meant the book to be a meditation on the hope of reconciliation between white and black. I will be pleased if it is seen as such; maybe then it can contribute in a small way to closing the gap that still divides the races in America.

Questions to Consider:

1. Charles Price’s title is Freedom’s Altar. Why do you think the title is significant? What are the sacrifices made on freedom’s altar by the Curtis family? By Oliver Price and his family? By Daniel McFee? By Andy Curtis?
2. The issues of slavery and race are at the center of Freedom’s Altar. What does the book say about the nature of slavery? Or racial distinctions? Discuss the moral implications for the Curtises of the kind of “lenient” bondage in which they kept Daniel before the war. Explain the different reactions to freedom displayed by Daniel and his stepson, Hamby. Was slaveholding an offense for which freedman could forgive his master, as Judge Curtis desired?
3. Questions of social class arise throughout the book. Oliver Price is a humble shoemaker and Nahum Bellamy a poor farmer; the Curtises are—or were—prosperous planters. What does the book say about the roles of poor whites and the planter aristocracy in Southern society before and during the Civil War? After the war? Discuss the relationship between poor whites and newly freed slaves as portrayed in the book.
4. Several characters in Freedom’s Altar struggle with guilt. Discuss Oliver Price’s feelings of guilt; Judge Curtis’s; Andy Curtis’s. How are these feelings resolved?
5. Discuss the importance of family in Freedom’s Altar. How similar and how different are the families portrayed? Do the differences depend on class or race? Is Daniel a member of the Curtis family? Is Hamby?
6. Freedom’s Altar offers many biblical allusions. Discuss how Daniel McFee resembles and differs from Christ; how Judge Curtis is similar and different from Job. Discuss the significance of Nahum Bellamy’s first name. Is religious faith a major theme of the book? How? Does the book draw a conclusion about godly intervention in human affairs? What is it?
7. Discuss the importance of the women characters—Sarah Curtis, Nancy Price, Jane Sims Price, Salina Curtis, Balm in Gilead Quillen, the Puckett women. Compare them to the male characters in terms of wisdom, strength, determination, courage, faith.
8. Interpret the character of Nahum Bellamy. Is his commitment to racial equity genuine? Or is he merely a demagogue bent on gaining personal power in a time of social unrest? Is his goal to better the condition of freedmen or to destroy the planter aristocracy? Is he mad or sane?
9. Describe the relationship of the freedmen, especially Daniel and Hamby McFee, to Nahum Bellamy. Does Bellamy do good as well as evil? Does he serve a positive purpose? Is he in any way a hero?
10. How does Judge Curtis deal with the threat of losing everything in the face of Bellamy’s inquisition? Discuss the irony of Judge Curtis’s loss in the context of his former role as a slave master who withheld from others what matters most in life—freedom.
11. What was Oliver Price fighting for in the war? How did defeat change his views? Discuss his opinion of freedmen? Is he a racist?
12. What is the meaning of the sacrifice of Daniel McFee? Is it a political act or a personal one? Is it the ultimate “Uncle Tom” concession to white superiority? Or is it the selfless act of one human being on behalf of another?
13. Discuss the epigraph of the book. How does the quote from the Illiad apply to the characters in Freedom’s Altar?