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Civil War and the Coming of Freedom Set in motion by the slaveholder's desire to preserve slavery, the Civil War ended with the liberation of four million American slaves. Although their owners sought to keep them ignorant of the events that fueled the great conflict, sooner or later slaves came to understand that the war was about them and that their future hinged on it's outcome. They identified with the Union cause, equating Northern success with their own liberation, although the Union's paramount leaders initially denied the connection and insisted that they fought for national unity. Ultimately, the slaves' view prevailed: by New Years Day 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, the war for the Union had indeed become a war for liberty.(Remembering Slavery, the book: chapter 5, page 209) Voices: James Earl Jones reads the words of Robert Glenn |