Knowing how to read and write is not enough for Louis, a voiceless Trumpeter Swan; his determination to learn to play a stolen trumpet takes him far from his wilderness home.

Correspondence, membership reports, telegrams, charter applications, legal briefs, printed matter, and clippings.

"Hundreds of African-American soldiers represented Wisconsin in the Civil War, and many of them lived in the state before and/or after the conflict. If these soldiers are mentioned at all in histories of the state during that time, it is with a sentence or two about their small numbers, or the belief that they were all from slaveholding states and served as substitutes for Wisconsin draftees. Make Way For Liberty will bring clarity to the question of how many African American men represented Wisconsin during the conflict, who among them lived in the state before and after the war, and the impact that their presence had on their communities. The experience of these veterans will be placed in the context of the history of African American settlement and immigration to the state in the late 19th and early 20th centuries."--