jazzeum
Four Star General
- Joined
- Apr 23, 2005
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Every year Gettysburg College and the Gilder Lehrman Foundation award the Lincoln Prize for the best scholarly work on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or a subject relating to that era.
This year's winner went to James Oakes for his "Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.” The book covers the history of emancipation, linking the political initiatives of Lincoln and the Congressional Republicans in Congress with the actions of Union soldiers and runaway slaves in the South. Oakes challenges the widespread belief that the Civil War was firstly a war to restore the Union, and only later, when it became a military necessity, a war to end slavery. Instead, Oakes asserts that emancipation and union were linked in Republican policy from the start of the war.
I've just recently started the book and it's very good.
Finalists or runnerups were:
More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic: 1829-1889 by Stephen Kantrowitz, which is an account of the long struggle of Northern activists -- black and white, famous and obscure -- to establish African Americans as full citizens, from abolitionism through the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South by Yael Sternhell is an interesting and different look at the movement of millions of men and women -- rich and poor, soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free -- onto the roads of the South that connected the battlefield and the home front.
I've read parts of Routes of War and it's worth reading. Not a long book.
This year's winner went to James Oakes for his "Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865.” The book covers the history of emancipation, linking the political initiatives of Lincoln and the Congressional Republicans in Congress with the actions of Union soldiers and runaway slaves in the South. Oakes challenges the widespread belief that the Civil War was firstly a war to restore the Union, and only later, when it became a military necessity, a war to end slavery. Instead, Oakes asserts that emancipation and union were linked in Republican policy from the start of the war.
I've just recently started the book and it's very good.
Finalists or runnerups were:
More Than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic: 1829-1889 by Stephen Kantrowitz, which is an account of the long struggle of Northern activists -- black and white, famous and obscure -- to establish African Americans as full citizens, from abolitionism through the Civil War and Reconstruction.
Routes of War: The World of Movement in the Confederate South by Yael Sternhell is an interesting and different look at the movement of millions of men and women -- rich and poor, soldiers and civilians, enslaved and free -- onto the roads of the South that connected the battlefield and the home front.
I've read parts of Routes of War and it's worth reading. Not a long book.