Confederate Emancipation Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War

In Confederate Emancipation, Bruce Levine looks closely at the 1864 proposal to arm and free slaves of the South-a proposal advanced most famously by Major-General Patrick Cleburne-after the disastrous results at the Battle of Chattanooga. Levine shows that within a year of Cleburne's proposal, which was initially rejected by the government of Richmond, Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and Robert E. Lee had all reached the same conclusions. Eventually, the soldiers of General Lee's army voted on the proposal, but the necessary orders were issued just two weeks before Appomattox, too late to affect the course of the war.

Bruce Levine is James G. Randall Professor of History, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Half Slave and Half Free: The Roots of Civil War and The Spirit of 1848: German Immigrants, Labor Conflict, and the Coming of Civil War, and is co-author of Who Built America? Working People and the Nation's Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society.