The Abolitionist Civil War - (Antislavery, Abolition, and the Atlantic World) by Frank J Cirillo (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Frank Cirillo's "The Abolitionist Civil War" examines the dramatic transformation of the abolitionist movement during the American Civil War, specifically its far-reaching origins, shifting contours, and drastic consequences for both abolitionism and the nation."--

Book Synopsis

Winner of the 2024 Wiley-Silver Prize in Civil War History
Finalist for the 2024 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize

The astonishing transformation of the abolitionist movement during the Civil War proved enormously consequential both for the cause of abolitionism and for the nation at large. Drawing on a cast of famous and obscure figures from Frederick Douglass to Moncure Conway, Frank J. Cirillo's The Abolitionist Civil War explores how immediate abolitionists contorted their arguments and clashed with each other as they labored over the course of the conflict to create a more perfect Union. Cirillo reveals that immediatists' efforts to forge a morally transformed nation that enshrined emancipation and Black rights shaped contemporary debates surrounding the abolition of slavery but ultimately did little to achieve racial justice for African Americans beyond formal freedom.

Review Quotes

"The sheer breadth and depth of Cirillo's analysis is praiseworthy. . . . The Abolitionist Civil War is an excellent study of the immediatist movement during the Civil War. . . . [A] must-read title for scholars of the US Civil War, slavery and emancipation, and abolitionism."--H-Slavery

"Cirillo focuses not only on the organized immediate emancipation campaign during the secession crisis and subsequent Civil War, but also on an unfolding civil war among key abolitionists amid the rise and fall of the 1861-1865 slaveholders' rebellion. . . . By deeply mining sundry personal papers and archival collections, as well as newspapers, tracts, and other printed primary materials, Cirillo demonstrates that immediate abolitionists were anything but irrelevant or incidental to enslavement's eradication in the United States."--Journal of Southern History

" . . . a deeply researched book. . . . Recommended."--CHOICE

"In The Abolitionist Civil War, Frank J. Cirillo offers a much-needed study of abolitionist activity during the Civil War. In twelve tightly chronological chapters, he highlights the ideas, interventions, and arguments of abolitionists from Secession Winter through May 1865. . . . This book is deeply researched and engaging, offering much to abolitionist historiography."--Civil War Book Review

"In compelling and captivating prose, The Abolitionist Civil War lays bare the internecine conflict that raged within abolitionism between 1861 and 1865. With a lively cast of characters, it reminds us that emancipation was not inevitable, nor had the Republican Party rendered abolitionists irrelevant. Perhaps most importantly, this war within a war helps explain why the American Civil War achieved so much and so little in the name of racial justice."--Caroline E. Janney, author of Ends of War: The Unfinished Fight of Lee's Army after Appomattox

"In focusing on the war years, Frank Cirillo bridges a significant gap in the scholarship on abolitionism. The Abolitionist Civil War deserves to be read by all who seek to understand how American slavery ended--and why its legacy lingers on."--Margot Minardi

"American abolitionists faced a perplexing dilemma: Could a war being waged to restore the Union be transformed into a war to abolish slavery? And even if so, how might the national scourge of anti-Black prejudice be overcome? William Lloyd Garrison accepted Abraham Lincoln's flawed compromise--emancipation without equality. But Frank J. Cirillo applauds Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, and Abby Kelley Foster, who kept striving to create 'a multiracial democracy.' This fine book untangles key aspects of the wartime struggle for freedom and equal rights. It shows what the abolitionists were up against--and how a prophetic vanguard refused to trim their sails."--Daniel W. Crofts, author of Lincoln and the Politics of Slavery: The Other Thirteenth Amendment and the Struggle to Save the Union

About the Author

Frank J. Cirillo is a historian of slavery and antislavery in the nineteenth-century United States. He has held positions at the University of Bonn, The New School, and the University of Virginia.