One of the nation's foremost Lincoln scholars offers an authoritative
consideration of the document that represents the most far-reaching
accomplishment of our greatest president.
No single official paper in American history changed the lives of as
many Americans as Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. But no American
document has been held up to greater suspicion. Its bland and lawyerlike
language is unfavorably compared to the soaring eloquence of the
Gettysburg Address and the Second Inaugural; its effectiveness in
freeing the slaves has been dismissed as a legal illusion. And for some
African-Americans the Proclamation raises doubts about Lincoln himself.
Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation dispels the myths and mistakes
surrounding the Emancipation Proclamation and skillfully reconstructs
how America's greatest president wrote the greatest American
proclamation of freedom.