With this book, Benjamin Quarles added a new dimension to the military history of the Revolution and addressed for the first time the diplomatic repercussions created by the British evacuation of African Americans at the close of the war.

While much is known about the white men and women who were involved in the anti-slavery movement, the black abolitionists have been largely ignored. This book, written by one of America's leading black historians, sets the record straight.

Quarles writes powerfully about the role of three-and-a-half million blacks in the South, who were impressed into non-combatant service building forts and entrenchments, working in factories and mines.

Quarles's groundbreaking work not only surveys the role of black Americans as they engaged in the dual, simultaneous processes of assimilating into and transforming the culture of their country, but also, in a portrait of the white response ...

Traces the development of Lincoln's thought on slavery and recounts the events leading to the Emancipation Proclamation.

This new edition of Douglass's classic autobiography examines the man and the myth, his complex relationship with women, and the enduring power of his book.