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	• Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge Historical ... Michael Vorenberg Cambridge University Press, 2001 - 324 pages average customer review:based on 2 reviews view larger image
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Amending the Constitution to end slavery was only one of several ways that Americans considered. Vorenberg explains that antebellum Americans were extremely reluctant to revise their Constitution, and even many Republicans regarded constitutional revision to end slavery as too radical. The Civil War's persistence and bloodiness caused many to change their minds, and adopt the Democrats' position of unlimited amending power. Although many historians and legal scholars have downplayed the Thirteenth Amendment's significance, Vorenberg informs us that this amendment marked the beginning of Americans' using constitutional amendments as instruments of social reform. Further, in the years following the Thirteenth Amendment's ratification, Radical Republicans understood it to be the foundation of federal legislation on behalf of African Americans.

This book is well researched, extensively documented, and informed on many historiographical issues. It will benefit both general readers and specialists, and force textbook authors to revise their accounts regarding the end of slavery.

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A Book Of Revelation(s)

I thought I understood the American Civil War and its role in ending slavery in America, but "Final Freedom" goes far beyond what most history books have to say on the subject. The issue of slavery was an enormously complex one, and bringing it to an end was a process that took decades, perhaps even centuries. Vorenberg's treatment of attitudes towards the Constitution was a revelation to me. Many of those in political power regarded changing the Constitution the way a fundamentalist would think of changing the Bible. How that attitude was overcome is a fascinating journey which follows many paths.

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Final Freedom looks at the struggle among legal thinkers, politicians, and ordinary Americans in the North and the border states to find a way to abolish slavery that would overcome the inadequacies of the Emancipation Proclamation. Michael Vorenberg tells the dramatic story of the creation of a constitutional amendment and argues that the crucial consideration of emancipation happened after, not before the Emancipation Proclamation; that the debate over final freedom was shaped by a level of volatility in party politics underestimated by previous historians, and that the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment represented a novel method of reform that transformed attitudes toward the Constitution. Michael Vorenberg is an assistant professor of history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a research assistant to David Herbert Donald for his prize-winning biography, Lincoln, and he is a contributor to the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Reader's Companion to the American Presidency. This is his first book.

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