Synopses & Reviews
I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves...are, and henceforward shall be free....No other words in American history changed the lives of so many Americans as this plain, blunt declaration from Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. But no other words in American history have been so often passed over or held up to greater suspicion.
Born in the struggle of Lincoln's determination to set slavery on the path to destruction, it has remained a document of struggle, as conflicting interpretations and historical mysteries swirl around it. What were Lincoln's real intentions? Was he the Great Emancipator or just a Great Fixer? What slaves did the Proclamation actually free? Or did the slaves free themselves? Why is the language of the Proclamation so bland, so legalistic, so far from the soaring eloquence of the Gettysburg Address?
Prizewinning Lincoln scholar Allen C. Guelzo presents, for the first time, a full scale study of Lincoln's greatest state paper. Using unpublished letters and documents, little- known accounts from Civil War-era newspapers, and Congressional memoirs and correspondence, Guelzo tells the story of the complicated web of statesmen, judges, slaves, and soldiers who accompanied, and obstructed, Abraham Lincoln on the path to the Proclamation.
The crisis of a White House at war, of plots in Congress and mutiny in the Army, of one man's will to turn the nation's face toward freedom -- all these passionate events come alive in a powerful and moving narrative of Lincoln's, and the Civil War's, greatest moment.
Review
Michael P. Musick
president, The Abraham Lincoln Institute
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is grounded in a remarkable array of primary sources, and peopled by compelling witnesses from the powerful to the obscure, all serving to illuminate the mighty crosscurrents of our time of greatest testing.
Review
Harold Holzer
co-chairman, U.S. Lincoln Bicentennial Commission
This is without question the greatest book yet written about Lincoln's greatest act. Allen Guelzo does for the Emancipation Proclamation what Garry Wills did for the Gettysburg Address -- bringing exhaustive scholarship, graceful writing, and provocative analysis to a document that has long cried out for a new treatment. With this superb and definitive study, Guelzo makes a powerful argument to restore Lincoln to his rightful place as "Great Emancipator."
Review
Michael Burlingame
author of The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln and Inside Lincoln's White House: The Complete Civil War Diary of John Hay
A careful study of this widely misunderstood document and its author, placing both in proper historical contest, is long overdue; Guelzo's volume admirably fills that void, proving a worthy companion to the author's prizewinning Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President.
About the Author
Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era at
Gettysburg College, where he also directs the Civil War Era Studies Program and
The Gettysburg Semester. He is the author of Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer
President (1999) and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of
Slavery in America (2004), both of which won the Lincoln Prize. He has
written essays and reviews for The Washington Post, The Wall Street
Journal, Time, the Journal of American History, and many other
publications.
Table of Contents
ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
One: Four Ways to Freedom
Two: The President Will Rise
Three: An Instrument In God's Hands
Four: The Mighty Act
Five: Fame Takes Him By The Hand
Postscript: Father Abraham
Appendix
Notes
Index