The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

by Glenn David Brasher
The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation: African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

by Glenn David Brasher

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Overview

In the Peninsula Campaign of spring 1862, Union general George B. McClellan failed in his plan to capture the Confederate capital and bring a quick end to the conflict. But the campaign saw something new in the war—the participation of African Americans in ways that were critical to the Union offensive. Ultimately, that participation influenced Lincoln's decision to issue the Emancipation Proclamation at the end of that year. Glenn David Brasher's unique narrative history delves into African American involvement in this pivotal military event, demonstrating that blacks contributed essential manpower and provided intelligence that shaped the campaign's military tactics and strategy and that their activities helped to convince many Northerners that emancipation was a military necessity.

Drawing on the voices of Northern soldiers, civilians, politicians, and abolitionists as well as Southern soldiers, slaveholders, and the enslaved, Brasher focuses on the slaves themselves, whose actions showed that they understood from the outset that the war was about their freedom. As Brasher convincingly shows, the Peninsula Campaign was more important in affecting the decision for emancipation than the Battle of Antietam.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781469617503
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date: 08/01/2014
Series: Civil War America
Edition description: 1
Pages: 296
Product dimensions: 5.70(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Glenn David Brasher is instructor of history at the University of Alabama.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

This impressive book belongs at the forefront of the conversation about how slavery fell apart on the ground in the midst of war. We come to realize the drama featured not a single actor or group of actors, but a cast of thousands whose actions and motivations we have not always understood very well." —Chandra M. Manning, Georgetown University



In vivid, deeply researched detail, Glenn David Brasher presents a crucial but almost unchronicled chapter of Civil War history. Anyone seeking to understand how the war to save the Union became a struggle for African American freedom should read this important book.—Adam Goodheart, author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening

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