Oakes, James. Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861 – 1865. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2013.

== Summary ==
This
book is a 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 traces the development of
antislavery policy from its prewar origins to the ratification of the
Thirteenth Amendment. The first policy attempted to surround the South with
free territories and states until the system of slavery collapsed; the second,
during the war, was military emancipation; and the third was a constitutional
amendment. Thus, slavery was far from a dying institution: it took four years
of war, 750,000 deaths, and three different policies to bring slavery to an
end.  He argues that political
abolitionism played a critical role in the formulation of Republican
anti-slavery policies and the coming of the Civil War.  The Republican Party, as base, was an
anti-slavery party. More so, he contends, Republicans constructed their
antislavery policies on the belief that they expected slave to run for freedom
if given a chance. Federal policy makers, Oakes further argues, came to rely on
the loyalty of the slaves, and “with that, how important the legacy of slave
resistance was to the destruction of slavery.” (xvii) Thus, from the beginning,
slavery was the cause of the rebellion and emancipation an appropriate means of
suppressing it. The “restoration of the Union” was the means to accomplish this
goal. From the First Confiscation Act in 186 1 and the order to transfer to a
free labor system in Louisiana to the preliminary proclamation in 1862, the end
of slavery was central to Republican policy. All of this happened prior to the
issuing of the Emancipation Proclamation. “It was always a war for the Union
and always a war over slavery.” (392) If there was a shift during the war, it
was the realization that destroying slavery was much hard than the Republicans
initially expected. 
Example:Republicans,
radical and moderate, believed the official purpose of the war was the
restoration of the Union, but “all agreed that slavery had caused the war and
all were prepared to free slaves as a means of ending it.” (110) For example,
the First Confiscation Act made military emancipation official Union policy.
This applied to slaves abandoned by the masters in the face of Union invasion
and slaves in any part of the Confederacy occupied by Union troops. 
See also: Barbara Jeanne Fields, Chandra Manning, Walter Johnson (2),