Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865

by James Oakes

Overview

Winner of the Lincoln Prize

"Oakes brilliantly succeeds in [clarifying] the aims of the war with a wholly new perspective." —David Brion Davis, New York Review of Books

Freedom National is a groundbreaking history of emancipation that joins the political initiatives of Lincoln and the Republicans in Congress with the courageous actions of Union soldiers and runaway slaves in the South. It shatters the widespread conviction that the Civil War was first and foremost a war to restore the Union and only gradually, when it became a military necessity, a war to end slavery. These two aims—"Liberty and Union, one and inseparable"—were intertwined in Republican policy from the very start of the war.

By summer 1861 the federal government invoked military authority to begin freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines in the disloyal South. In the loyal Border States the Republicans tried coaxing officials into gradual abolition with promises of compensation and the colonization abroad of freed blacks. James Oakes shows that Lincoln’s landmark 1863 proclamation marked neither the beginning nor the end of emancipation: it triggered a more aggressive phase of military emancipation, sending Union soldiers onto plantations to entice slaves away and enlist the men in the army. But slavery proved deeply entrenched, with slaveholders determined to re-enslave freedmen left behind the shifting Union lines. Lincoln feared that the war could end in Union victory with slavery still intact. The Thirteenth Amendment that so succinctly abolished slavery was no formality: it was the final act in a saga of immense war, social upheaval, and determined political leadership.

Fresh and compelling, this magisterial history offers a new understanding of the death of slavery and the rebirth of a nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393089714
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/03/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	596
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

James Oakes is one of our foremost Civil War historians and a two-time winner of the Lincoln Prize for his works on the politics of abolition. He teaches at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

What People are Saying About This

Eric Foner

This remarkable book offers the best account ever written of the complex historical process known as emancipation. The story is dramatic and compelling, and no one interested in the American Civil War or the fate of slavery can afford to ignore it.

Editorial Reviews

Was Lincoln really a "Reluctant Emancipator," as Greeley and many historians since his day have insisted?…In Freedom National, historian James Oakes answers that question eloquently and, in the judgment of this amateur student of the Civil War, fully. Oakes argues that Lincoln, from the moment of his inauguration, began using every political and military means at his disposal to wipe out slavery forever…[Oakes's] argument that emancipation was a process, not the result of a single document, produces some helpful distinctions and benchmarks.

The Washington Post - Howell Raines

Eliminating slavery proved harder “than anyone first imagined,” writes Oakes (The Radical and the Republican), professor of history at the CUNY Graduate Center, in this richly satisfying account. Ironically, the Constitution was “one of the most formidable obstacles to abolition—”enlightenment economics taught that slavery would eventually disappear, so the Founding Fathers felt little was lost in placating southern states by writing protections into the document. As deferent to the Constitution as their opponents, Republicans never supported abolishing slavery where it was legal, and though Lincoln maintained “that he would take no stance that went against his party,” Southern states saw the election of 1860 as a harbinger of abolition. It was, however, a slow process: by war’s end a mere 15% of four million slaves were free. Congressman James Wilson remarked, “slavery was a ‘condemned’ but ‘unexecuted culprit.’” Only with the 1865 ratification of the 13th Amendment were all slaves freed, “everywhere, for all future time.” Both a refreshing take on a moment in history and a primer on the political process, Oakes’s study is thoroughly absorbing. Maps & illus. (Dec.)

Publishers Weekly

"An absorbing look at the complex process of emancipation and the forces behind the incentives and threats—and the war—that eventually led to the end of slavery in the U.S."

Booklist

"Oakes argues that Lincoln, from the moment of his inauguration, began using every political and military means at his disposal to wipe out slavery forever."

Howell Raines

"Freedom National provides the best account we have of the process of emancipation and the ultimate abolition of slavery, on the ground in the South and in the halls of power at Washington. It also makes clear that from the beginning, nearly all participants recognized that the central issue of the war was slavery and that its likely outcome was a new birth of freedom."

James M. McPherson James M. McPherson

"A masterful piece of scholarship.... A must-read book for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the complicated and politically charged nature of emancipation."

Washington Independent Review of Books - Robert I. Girardi

"In this brilliant new look at the destruction of slavery during the American Civil War, Oakes reveals how the U.S. abolitionist movement relied not only on high-minded moral suasion but also on the small-bore legalistic strategy of the Republican Party."

Foreign Affairs - Walter Russell Mead

"This remarkable book offers the best account ever written of the complex historical process known as emancipation. The story is dramatic and compelling, and no one interested in the American Civil War or the fate of slavery can afford to ignore it."

Eric Foner

"Freedom National provides the best account we have of the process of emancipation and the ultimate abolition of slavery, on the ground in the South and in the halls of power at Washington. It also makes clear that from the beginning, nearly all participants recognized that the central issue of the war was slavery and that its likely outcome was a new birth of freedom."

James M. McPherson

A masterful piece of scholarship.... A must-read book for anyone seeking a greater understanding of the complicated and politically charged nature of emancipation.

Robert I. Girardi - Washington Independent Review of Books

Lincoln Prize-winner Oakes argues that the Civil War was fought not to preserve the Union (the standard line) but primarily to end slavery; he also chronicles the immediate consequences of emancipation. See David Von Drehle's just-published Rise to Greatness: Abraham Lincoln and America's Most Perilous Year for a different approach to the subject.

Library Journal

A finely argued book about how the destruction of slavery involved much more than Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Oakes (History/CUNY Graduate Center; The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, 2007, etc.) returns to the notion that slavery, rather than states' rights or "an outbreak of hysteria, irrationality and paranoia," was truly the origin of the Civil War. In order to challenge the Constitutional consensus on slavery, the anti-slavery activists had to appeal to the broad principles of "natural law," to which the Framers had implicitly referred. Also, opponents of slavery had to make the convincing argument that slaves were in fact not property, using the Somersett case in England as a legal benchmark. In addition to the Emancipation Proclamation, Oakes reveals the many smaller but significant victories for the opponents of slavery--e.g., New York's 1799 emancipation law and John Quincy Adams' eloquent defense of the slave ship Amistad's rebels before the Supreme Court. Proponents of the Liberty Party asserted that slavery was not a national institution, but peculiar to certain states and suitable to be "cordoned off," thus underscoring the importance of the border states during the Civil War as "containment" of the slave contagion; on the other hand, freedom, they believed, was national and not able to be restricted locally. Oakes wades through extremely nuanced arguments that evolved over time in the North and South, in Congress, in the military and in the mind of Lincoln. However, only 13 percent of the 4 million slaves living in the South were freed by the end of the war, prompting the necessity for a 13th Amendment to ensure Southern tractability. A useful contribution to the literature about slavery and the Civil War.

Kirkus Reviews