Oakes, James. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861 – 1865. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2013.

Summary
This book is a 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 traces the development of antislavery policy from its prewar origins to the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. The first policy attempted to surround the South with free territories and states until the system of slavery collapsed; the second, during the war, was military emancipation; and the third was a constitutional amendment. Thus, slavery was far from a dying institution: it took four years of war, 750,000 deaths, and three different policies to bring slavery to an end. He argues that political abolitionism played a critical role in the formulation of Republican anti-slavery policies and the coming of the Civil War. The Republican Party, as base, was an anti-slavery party. More so, he contends, Republicans constructed their antislavery policies on the belief that they expected slave to run for freedom if given a chance. Federal policy makers, Oakes further argues, came to rely on the loyalty of the slaves, and “with that, how important the legacy of slave resistance was to the destruction of slavery.” (xvii) Thus, from the beginning, slavery was the cause of the rebellion and emancipation an appropriate means of suppressing it. The “restoration of the Union” was the means to accomplish this goal. From the First Confiscation Act in 186 1 and the order to transfer to a free labor system in Louisiana to the preliminary proclamation in 1862, the end of slavery was central to Republican policy. All of this happened prior to the issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. “It was always a war for the Union and always a war over slavery.” (392) If there was a shift during the war, it was the realization that destroying slavery was much hard than the Republicans initially expected.

Example:Republicans, radical and moderate, believed the official purpose of the war was the restoration of the Union, but “all agreed that slavery had caused the war and all were prepared to free slaves as a means of ending it.” (110) For example, the First Confiscation Act made military emancipation official Union policy. This applied to slaves abandoned by the masters in the face of Union invasion and slaves in any part of the Confederacy occupied by Union troops.

See also: Barbara Jeanne Fields, Chandra Manning, Walter Johnson (2),