UNC Press - The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation

296 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 22 halftones, 2 maps

Civil War America

Cloth

ISBN 978-0-8078-3544-9

Published: April 2012

The Peninsula Campaign and the Necessity of Emancipation

African Americans and the Fight for Freedom

By Glenn David Brasher

Awards & Distinctions

2013 Wiley-Silver Prize, Center for Civil War Research

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.

About the Author

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

Reviews

“Recommended. All levels/libraries.”
--Choice

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

"[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

"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

"[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

“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