Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation
Author: Glenn David Brasher
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 298
ISBN-13: 0807835447
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation
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"None More Meritorious"
Author: Glenn David Brasher
Publisher:
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 616
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAbstract: Although scholars have long heralded African-American participation in the American Civil War, they have not detailed the ways that the activities of blacks shaped the course of particular military campaigns. In early 1862, Union General George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign advanced to the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, but failed to capture the Confederate capital. Historians have argued that the results of this failed offensive influenced Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. It is therefore important to uncover the degree to which blacks were a part of the campaign's history. This study demonstrates that blacks influenced the strategy and tactics of both the Union and Confederate armies and helped shape the campaign's results. More importantly, it maintains that the ways in which African Americans participated in the campaign helped prepare Northerners to accept emancipation as a military necessity. In doing so, the work blends military, social, and political history. This narrative history views the campaign from a variety of perspectives. The voices of northern soldiers and civilians, Union politicians, and abolitionists are often heard, but so too are southern soldiers, slaveholders, and slaves. As much as possible, however, the work attempts to highlight the activities of African Americans. The actions and choices of slaves and free blacks are the backbone of the work, demonstrating that their involvement in the campaign mattered a great deal. This study finds that the question of the status of slaves fleeing to Union lines was less important in the debate over emancipation than was the issue of their military contributions to both the North and the South. It demonstrates that no one individual, group, or historical force freed the slaves, but that the convergence of many factors, contingencies, and individual efforts led to emancipation. By examining the ways that blacks affected the outcome of the Peninsula Campaign and how leaders used those activities to argue for the military necessity of emancipation, this work presents a more comprehensive understanding of the role that blacks played in helping to bring about their freedom.
Lincoln and Emancipation
Author: Edna Greene Medford
Publisher: SIU Press
Published: 2015-05-12
Total Pages: 160
ISBN-13: 0809333643
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this succinct study, Edna Greene Medford examines the ideas and events that shaped President Lincoln’s responses to slavery, following the arc of his ideological development from the beginning of the Civil War, when he aimed to pursue a course of noninterference, to his championing of slavery’s destruction before the conflict ended. Throughout, Medford juxtaposes the president’s motivations for advocating freedom with the aspirations of African Americans themselves, restoring African Americans to the center of the story about the struggle for their own liberation. Lincoln and African Americans, Medford argues, approached emancipation differently, with the president moving slowly and cautiously in order to save the Union while the enslaved and their supporters pressed more urgently for an end to slavery. Despite the differences, an undeclared partnership existed between the president and slaves that led to both preservation of the Union and freedom for those in bondage. Medford chronicles Lincoln’s transition from advocating gradual abolition to campaigning for immediate emancipation for the majority of the enslaved, a change effected by the military and by the efforts of African Americans. The author argues that many players—including the abolitionists and Radical Republicans, War Democrats, and black men and women—participated in the drama through agitation, military support of the Union, and destruction of the institution from within. Medford also addresses differences in the interpretation of freedom: Lincoln and most Americans defined it as the destruction of slavery, but African Americans understood the term to involve equality and full inclusion into American society. An epilogue considers Lincoln’s death, African American efforts to honor him, and the president’s legacy at home and abroad. Both enslaved and free black people, Medford demonstrates, were fervent participants in the emancipation effort, showing an eagerness to get on with the business of freedom long before the president or the North did. By including African American voices in the emancipation narrative, this insightful volume offers a fresh and welcome perspective on Lincoln’s America.
The Richmond Campaign of 1862
Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Publisher: UNC Press Books
Published: 2000
Total Pages: 304
ISBN-13: 9780807825525
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhiting's Confederate division in the battle of Gaines's Mill, the role of artillery in the battle of Malvern Hill, and the efforts of Radical Republicans in the North to use the Richmond campaign to rally support for emancipation."--BOOK JACKET.
I Freed Myself
Author: David Williams
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2014-04-21
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 1107016495
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines the many ways in which African Americans made the Civil War about ending slavery. Abraham Lincoln's primary goal was to save the Union rather than to absolve the institution of slavery, yet slaves who escaped to Union lines refused to fight for the Union while remaining enslaved, ultimately forcing Lincoln to disband the institution.
Lincoln’s Proclamation
Author: William A. Blair
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
Published: 2009-11-01
Total Pages: 248
ISBN-13: 0807895415
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Emancipation Proclamation, widely remembered as the heroic act that ended slavery, in fact freed slaves only in states in the rebellious South. True emancipation was accomplished over a longer period and by several means. Essays by eight distinguished contributors consider aspects of the president's decision making, as well as events beyond Washington, offering new insights on the consequences and legacies of freedom, the engagement of black Americans in their liberation, and the issues of citizenship and rights that were not decided by Lincoln's document. The essays portray emancipation as a product of many hands, best understood by considering all the actors, the place, and the time. The contributors are William A. Blair, Richard Carwardine, Paul Finkelman, Louis Gerteis, Steven Hahn, Stephanie McCurry, Mark E. Neely Jr., Michael Vorenberg, and Karen Fisher Younger.
African American Faces of the Civil War
Author: Ronald S. Coddington
Publisher: JHU Press
Published: 2012-08-20
Total Pages: 384
ISBN-13: 142140625X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA renowned collector of Civil War photographs and a prodigious researcher, Ronald S. Coddington combines compelling archival images with biographical stories that reveal the human side of the war. This third volume in his series on Civil War soldiers contains previously unpublished photographs of African American Civil War participants—many of whom fought to secure their freedom. During the Civil War, 200,000 African American men enlisted in the Union army or navy. Some of them were free men and some escaped from slavery; others were released by sympathetic owners to serve the war effort. African American Faces of the Civil War tells the story of the Civil War through the images of men of color who served in roles that ranged from servants and laborers to enlisted men and junior officers. Coddington discovers these portraits— cartes de visite, ambrotypes, and tintypes—in museums, archives, and private collections. He has pieced together each individual’s life and fate based upon personal documents, military records, and pension files. These stories tell of ordinary men who became fighters, of the prejudice they faced, and of the challenges they endured. African American Faces of the Civil War makes an important contribution to a comparatively understudied aspect of the war and provides a fascinating look into lives that helped shape America.
Armies of Deliverance
Author: Elizabeth R. Varon
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 529
ISBN-13: 019086060X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLoyal Americans marched off to war in 1861 not to conquer the South but to liberate it. In Armies of Deliverance, Elizabeth Varon offers both a sweeping narrative of the Civil War and a bold new interpretation of Union and Confederate war aims. Lincoln's Union coalition sought to deliver the South from slaveholder tyranny and deliver to it the blessings of modern civilization. Over the course of the war, supporters of black freedom built the case that slavery was the obstacle to national reunion and that emancipation would secure military victory and benefit Northern and Southern whites alike. To sustain their morale, Northerners played up evidence of white Southern Unionism, of antislavery progress in the slaveholding border states, and of disaffection among Confederates. But the Union's emphasis on Southern deliverance served, ironically, not only to galvanize loyal Amer icans but also to galvanize disloyal ones. Confederates, fighting to establish an independent slaveholding republic, scorned the Northern promise of liberation and argued that the emancipation of blacks was synonymous with the subjugation of the white South.
Lincoln’s Hundred Days
Author: Louis P. Masur
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2012-09-22
Total Pages: 385
ISBN-13: 0674067533
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"The time has come now," Abraham Lincoln told his cabinet as he presented the preliminary draft of a "Proclamation of Emancipation." Lincoln's effort to end slavery has been controversial from its inception-when it was denounced by some as an unconstitutional usurpation and by others as an inadequate half-measure-up to the present, as historians have discounted its import and impact. At the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, Louis Masur seeks to restore the document's reputation by exploring its evolution. Lincoln's Hundred Days is the first book to tell the full story of the critical period between September 22, 1862, when Lincoln issued his preliminary Proclamation, and January 1, 1863, when he signed the final, significantly altered, decree. In those tumultuous hundred days, as battlefield deaths mounted, debate raged. Masur commands vast primary sources to portray the daily struggles and enormous consequences of the president's efforts as Lincoln led a nation through war and toward emancipation. With his deadline looming, Lincoln hesitated and calculated, frustrating friends and foes alike, as he reckoned with the anxieties and expectations of millions. We hear these concerns, from poets, cabinet members and foreign officials, from enlisted men on the front and free blacks as well as slaves. Masur presents a fresh portrait of Lincoln as a complex figure who worried about, listened to, debated, prayed for, and even joked with his country, and then followed his conviction in directing America toward a terrifying and thrilling unknown.
The Peninsula Campaign of 1862
Author: Kevin Dougherty
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
Published: 2010-01-08
Total Pages: 194
ISBN-13: 1604730617
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe largest offensive of the Civil War, involving army, navy, and marine forces, the Peninsula Campaign has inspired many history books. No previous work, however, analyzes Union general George B. McClellan's massive assault toward Richmond in the context of current and enduring military doctrine. The Peninsula Campaign of 1862: A Military Analysis fills this void. Background history is provided for continuity, but the heart of this book is military analysis and the astonishing extent to which the personality traits of generals often overwhelm even the best efforts of their armies. The Peninsula Campaign lends itself to such a study. Lessons for those studying the art of war are many. On water, the first ironclads forever changed naval warfare. At the strategic level, McClellan's inability to grasp Lincoln's grand objective becomes evident. At the operational level, Robert E. Lee's difficulty in synchronizing his attacks deepens the mystique of how he achieved so much with so little. At the tactical level, the Confederate use of terrain to trade space for time allows for a classic study in tactics. Moreover, the campaign is full of lessons about the personal dimension of war. McClellan's overcaution, Lee's audacity, and Jackson's personal exhaustion all provide valuable insights for today's commanders and for Civil War enthusiasts still debating this tremendous struggle. Historic photos and detailed battle maps make this study an invaluable resource for those touring the many battlegrounds from Young's Mill and Yorktown through Fair Oaks to the final throes of the Seven Days' Battles.
