The Peninsula Campaign & the Necessity of Emancipation - (Civil War America) by Glenn David Brasher (Paperback)

About the Book

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

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

"[An] assiduously researched and highly illuminating work." -- Journal of Southern History

"[A] satisfying read, breaking new ground and laying the groundwork for future studies of Black/White relations on the front lines of the Civil War. This excellent book is well written, extensively researched, and convincingly argued. The University of North Carolina Press has a winner here." -- TOCWOC: A Civil War Blog

"A fascinating, impressively researched, and lucidly written addition to the literature on emancipation." -- American Historical Review

"In a highly stimulating way this seminal work ties social, military, and political developments together into a powerful thesis about the making of the Federal decision for emancipation." -- Journal of American History

"No student of the Civil War who wants to give an informed answer when next confronted with the 'black Confederate' question can afford to miss this fine book." -- Civil War Monitor blog

"Rarely does an author merge so seamlessly in one study a military history -- a particular campaign, social history -- slavery and history from the bottom up, and political history -- the origins of the Emancipation Proclamation." -- Civil War Book Review

"Recommended. All levels/libraries." -- CHOICE

"This book effectively opens new doors of scholarly exploration." -- Virginia Magazine

"This book, which is destined to become a mainstay in the historiography of emancipation, offers a constant reminder that history does not occur in a vacuum." -- Civil War News

"[Brasher] successfully challenges both myths [about slave participation in the Civil War], and in the process, places Virginia's slave population at the center of one of the most important military campaigns of 1862. . . . [This book] reminds us just how much the Union and Confederacy shared in their valuation of blacks during the war." -- The Atlantic

About the Author

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