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Explores the Civil War and the anti-slavery movement, specifically highlighting the plan to help abolish slavery by surrounding the slave states with territories of freedom and discusses the possibility of what could have been a more peaceful alternative to the war.

Winner of the Lincoln Prize "Oakes brilliantly succeeds in [clarifying] the aims of the war with a wholly new perspective." —David Brion Davis, New York Review of Books Freedom National is a groundbreaking history of emancipation that joins the political initiatives of Lincoln and the Republicans in Congress with the courageous actions of Union soldiers and runaway slaves in the South. It shatters the widespread conviction that the Civil War was first and foremost a war to restore the Union and only gradually, when it became a military necessity, a war to end slavery. These two aims—"Liberty and Union, one and inseparable"—were intertwined in Republican policy from the very start of the war. By summer 1861 the federal government invoked military authority to begin freeing slaves, immediately and without slaveholder compensation, as they fled to Union lines in the disloyal South. In the loyal Border States the Republicans tried coaxing officials into gradual abolition with promises of compensation and the colonization abroad of freed blacks. James Oakes shows that Lincoln’s landmark 1863 proclamation marked neither the beginning nor the end of emancipation: it triggered a more aggressive phase of military emancipation, sending Union soldiers onto plantations to entice slaves away and enlist the men in the army. But slavery proved deeply entrenched, with slaveholders determined to re-enslave freedmen left behind the shifting Union lines. Lincoln feared that the war could end in Union victory with slavery still intact. The Thirteenth Amendment that so succinctly abolished slavery was no formality: it was the final act in a saga of immense war, social upheaval, and determined political leadership. Fresh and compelling, this magisterial history offers a new understanding of the death of slavery and the rebirth of a nation.

People, Places, and Power - the Story of American Democracy.Of the People: A History of the United States not only tells the history of America-of its people and places, of its dealings and ideals-but it also unfolds the story of American democracy, carefully marking how this country's evolution has been anything but certain, from its complex beginnings toits modern challenges.The book incorporates three unique features into each chapter:DT American Portraits are biographical vignettes that open every chapter and focus on one person (ordinary or not) whose individual experiences helped to shape our common history.DT American Landscapes are brief essays that focus on one essential space, building, locale, town, encampment, community, or region in time, examining the dynamic of people and power.DT America and the World vignettes also appear in every chapter, setting America's history within a global context.The authors see American history as a story "of the people," of their struggles to shape their lives and their land. This comprehensive survey focuses on the social and political lives of people-some famous, some ordinary-revealing the compelling story of America's democracy first from anindividual perspective, then also from within their communities, and ultimately within the larger context of the world.

Opponents at first, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln gradually became allies, each influenced by and attracted to the other. James Oakes brings these two iconic figures to life and sheds new light on the central issues of slavery, race and equality in Civil War America.

An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action—in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade—they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.

Of the People: A Concise History of the United States not only tells the history of America--of its people and places, of its dealings and ideals--but it also unfolds the story of American democracy, carefully marking how this country's evolution has been anything but certain, from its complex beginnings to its modern challenges. This comprehensive survey focuses on the social and political lives of people--some famous, some ordinary--revealing the compelling story of America's democracy from an individual perspective, from across the landscapes of diverse communities, and ultimately from within the larger context of the world. The Concise Edition tells the same great story, but with fewer words and images. Maintaining the structure, the features, and maps of the comprehensive edition, this concise version has been thoughtfully condensed--paragraphs now contain trimmed sentences and a reduced number of examples--thus leaving the book's core content and compelling narrative unchanged.

This pathbreaking social history of the slaveholding South marks a turn in our understanding of antebellum America and the coming of the Civil War. Oakes's bracing analysis breaks the myth that slaveholders were a paternalistic aristocracy dedicated to the values of honor, race, and section. Instead they emerge as having much in common with their entrepreneurial counterparts in the North: they were committed to free-market commercialism and political democracy for white males. The Civil War was not an inevitable conflict between civilizations on different paths but the crack-up of a single system, the result of people and events.

This pathbreaking interpretation of the slaveholding South begins with the insight that slavery and freedom were not mutually exclusive but were intertwined in every dimension of life in the South. James Oakes traces the implications of this insight for relations between masters and slaves, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, and for the rise of a racist ideology.

Of the People presents a balance of social, political, and cultural history in a chronological sequence. It traces the history of America - its people, places, and ideals - and unfolds the story of American democracy, carefully marking how the country's evolution has been anything but certainfrom its complex beginnings to its modern challenges.