Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment

ISBN-13: 9780521543842 / Angielski / Miękka / 2004 / 305 str.

Michael Vorenberg

Opis

Final Freedom looks at the struggle among legal thinkers, politicians, and ordinary Americans in the North and the border states to find a way to abolish slavery that would overcome the inadequacies of the Emancipation Proclamation. Michael Vorenberg tells the dramatic story of the creation of a constitutional amendment and argues that the crucial consideration of emancipation happened after, not before the Emancipation Proclamation; that the debate over final freedom was shaped by a level of volatility in party politics underestimated by previous historians, and that the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment represented a novel method of reform that transformed attitudes toward the Constitution. Michael Vorenberg is an assistant professor of history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a research assistant to David Herbert Donald for his prize-winning biography, Lincoln, and he is a contributor to the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Reader's Companion to the American Presidency. This is his first book.

Recenzje

'This study is a remarkable piece of historical research and writing … A short review can barely do justice to the virtues of this outstanding work. Subtly argued and elegantly written, almost every page brims with fresh insights.' The Historian

Spis treści

List of illustrations; Acknowledgements; List of abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Slavery's constitution; 2. Freedom's constitution; 3. Facing freedom; 4. Debating freedom; 5. The key note of freedom; 6. The war within a war: emancipation and the election of 1864; 7. A King's cure; 8. The contested legacy of constitutional freedom; Appendix: votes on antislavery amendment; Bibliography; Index.