James Oakes

This project synthesizes for the first time the social, political, military, and ideological history of emancipation during the Civil War. The focus is on how emancipation happened, rather than on who freed the slaves, and relies on plantation manuscripts, slave autobiographies, the Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress, the papers of Lincoln’s cabinet and personal secretaries, congressional debates, the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, the Jefferson Davis papers, the records of the Confederate Congress, travelers’ accounts, and newspapers.