A freedman is a former slave who has been manumitted or emancipated.
Millions of freedmen were created as a result of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution as a result of the American Civil War, although there were freedmen all across the U.S. before the Emancipation Proclamation. To meet this demand, during reconstruction, a Freedmen's Bureau was created.
See reconstruction; Jim Crow.
Freedmen were also a large social class in ancient Rome. It was the exceptional feature of ancient Rome that almost all slaves freed by Roman owners automatically received not only freedom but also Roman citizenship. As citizens, needing a Roman name for the first time, freedmen customary took the nomen of their former owner, who now became their patronus. A precedent was set under the Claudian Civil Service where freedman were used as servants in the Roman bureaucracy. In addition, Claudius passed a legislation concerning slaves. Specifically if any slave owner abandoned their sick slave and s/he recovered they became a freedmen. Claudius was extensively criticized for using slaves as freedmen in the Imperial Courts.
