Paying Freedom's Price provides a comprehensive yet brief and readable history of the role of African Americans--both slave and free--from the decade leading up to the Civil War until its immediate aftermath. Rather than focusing on black military service, the white-led abolitionist movement, or Lincoln's emergence as the great emancipator, Escott concentrates on the black military and civilian experience in the North as well as the South. He argues that African Americans--slaves, free Blacks, civilians, soldiers, men, and women-- played a crucial role in transforming the sectional conflict...