Combines a sweeping narrative history of the Civil War with a bold new look at the war's significance for American society. Professor Hummel sees the Civil War as America's turning point: simultaneously the culmination and repudiation of the American revolution. A unique feature of the book is the bibliographical essays which follow every chapter. Here the author surveys the literature and points out where his own interpretation fits into the continuing clash of viewpoints which informs historical debate on the Civil War.

The newly discovered slave narratives of John Washington and Wallace Turnage—and their harrowing and empowering journey to emancipation. Slave narratives, among the most powerful records of our past, are extremely rare, with only fifty-five surviving post-Civil War. This book is a major new addition to this imperative part of American history—the firsthand accounts of two slaves, John Washington and Wallace Turnage, who through a combination of intelligence, daring, and sheer luck, reached the protection of the occupying Union troops and found emancipation. In A Slave No More, David W. Blight enriches the authentic narrative texts of these two young men using a wealth of genealogical information, handed down through family and friends. Blight has reconstructed their childhoods as sons of white slaveholders, their service as cooks and camp hands during the Civil War, and their struggle to stable lives among the black working class in the north, where they reunited their families. In the previously unpublished manuscripts of Turnage and Washington, we find history at its most intimate, portals that offer a startling new answer to the question of how four million people moved from slavery to liberty. Here are the untold stories of two extraordinary men whose stories, once thought lost, now take their place at the heart of the American experience—as Blight rightfully calls them, “heroes of a war within the war.” “These powerful memoirs reveal poignant, heroic, painful and inspiring lives.”—Publishers Weekly

This book combines a sweeping narrative of the Civil War with a bold new look at the war’s significance for American society. Professor Hummel sees the Civil War as America’s turning point: simultaneously the culmination and repudiation of the American revolution. While the chapters tell the story of the Civil War and discuss the issues raised in readable prose, each chapter is followed by a detailed bibliographical essay, looking at all the different major works on the subject, with their varying ideological viewpoints and conclusions. In his economic analysis of slavery, Professor Hummel takes a different view than the two major poles which have determined past discussions of the topic. While some writers claim that slavery was unprofitable and harmful to the Southern economy, and others maintain it was profitable and efficient for the South, Hummel uses the economic concept of Deadweight Loss to show that slavery was both highly profitable for slave owners and harmful to Southern economic development. While highly critical of Confederate policy, Hummel argues that the war was fought to prevent secession, not to end slavery, and that preservation of the Union was not necessary to end slavery: the North could have let the South secede peacefully, and slavery would still have been quickly terminated. Part of Hummel’s argument is that the South crucially relied on the Northern states to return runaway slaves to their owners. This new edition has a substantial new introduction by the author, correcting and supplementing the account given in the first edition (the major revision is an increase in the estimate of total casualties) and a foreword by John Majewski, a rising star of Civil War studies.

"By examining how ordinary Virginia citizens grappled with the vexing problem of slavery in a society dedicated to universal liberty, Eva Sheppard Wolf broadens our understanding of such important concepts as freedom, slavery, emancipation, and race in the early years of the American republic. She frames her study around the moment between slavery and liberty - emancipation - shedding new light on the complicated relations between whites and blacks in a slave society." "Wolf argues that during the post-Revolutionary period, white Virginians understood both liberty and slavery to be racial concepts more than political ideas. Through an in-depth analysis of archival records, particularly those dealing with manumission between 1782 and 1806, she reveals how these entrenched beliefs shaped both thought and behavior. In spite of qualms about slavery, white Virginians repeatedly demonstrated their unwillingness to abolish the institution." "The manumission law of 1782 eased restrictions on individual emancipation and made possible the liberation of thousands, but Wolf discovers that far fewer slaves were freed in Virginia than previously thought. Those who were emancipated posed a disturbing social, political, and even moral problem in the minds of whites. Where would ex-slaves fit in a society that could not conceive of black liberty? As Wolf points out, even those few white Virginians who proffered emancipation plans always suggested sending freed slaves to some other place. Nat Turner's rebellion in 1831 led to a public debate over ending slavery, after which discussions of emancipation in the Old Dominion largely disappeared as the eastern slaveholding elite tightened its grip on political power in the state." "This well-informed and carefully crafted book outlines important and heretofore unexamined changes in whites' views of blacks and liberty in the new nation. By linking the Revolutionary and antebellum eras, it shows how white attitudes hardened during the half-century that followed the declaration that "all men are created equal.""--BOOK JACKET.

A groundbreaking collective biography narrating the history of emancipation through the life stories of women of African descent in the Americas.

The Address was delivered at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, during the American Civil War, four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the decisive Battle of Gettysburg. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as "a new birth of freedom" that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, and that would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant. Throughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.