Who Freed the Slaves?

Though it’s commonly assumed that American slaves were liberated by Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of January 1863, Richards (The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War) argues throughout this dense, well-researched narrative that the process was much longer and more complex, and its eventual outcome, the Thirteenth Amendment, was far from a foregone conclusion. Richards emphasizes the central role played by Ohio Congressman James Ashley, better known for his attempts to impeach President Andrew Johnson, in securing the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Richards is also quick to admit that many of the promises of freedom were left unfulfilled for former slaves and their descendants. The book’s length and its level of detail may discourage casual readers, and Richards’s prose style is in numerous instances overly colloquial. Moreover, the book’s many illustrations, primarily photographs and political cartoons, are not integrated into the text, so their significance and context is unclear. Nevertheless, Richards shows that even though black Americans of the time would not “experience freedom in its fullest,” the efforts of Ashley, Lincoln, and other politicians ensured that “the old assumption that every black person in America was a slave or a runaway was now history.” [em](Mar.) [/em]