Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment

by Michael Vorenberg

• ISBN13: 9780521543842
• ISBN10: 0521543843
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-07-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book examines emancipation after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. Focusing on the making and meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment, Final Freedom looks at the struggle among legal thinkers, politicians, and ordinary Americans in the North and the border states to find a way to abolish slavery that would overcome the inadequacies of the Emancipation Proclamation. The book tells the dramatic story of the creation of a constitutional amendment and reveals an unprecedented transformation in American race relations, politics, and constitutional thought. Using a wide array of archival and published sources, Professor Vorenberg argues that the crucial consideration of emancipation occurred after, not before, the Emancipation Proclamation; that the debate over final freedom was shaped by a level of volatility in party politics underestimated by prior historians; and that the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment represented a novel method of reform that transformed attitudes toward the Constitution.

Author Biography

Michael Vorenberg is Assistant Professor of History at Brown University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. Slavery's constitution

2. Freedom's constitution

3. Facing freedom

4. Debating freedom: Congress and the Thirteenth Amendment

5. The key note of freedom: presidential politics and the Thirteenth Amendment

6. The war within a war: emancipation and the election of 1864

7. A King's cure: adopting the Thirteenth Amendment

8. The contested legacy of constitutional freedom.