The first narrative history of the Civil War told by the very people
it freed. Groundbreaking, compelling, and poignant, The Slaves' War
delivers an unprecedented vision of the nation's bloodiest conflict.
An acclaimed historian of nineteenth-century and African-American
history, Andrew Ward gives us the first narrative of the Civil War told
from the perspective of those whose destiny it decided. Woven together
from hundreds of interviews, diaries, letters, and memoirs, here is the
Civil War as seen from not only battlefields, capitals, and camps, but
also slave quarters, kitchens, roadsides, farms, towns, and swamps.
Speaking in a quintessentially American language of wit, candor, and
biblical power, army cooks and launderers, runaways, teamsters, and
gravediggers bring the war to vivid life.
From slaves' theories about the causes of the war to their frank
assessments of such major figures as Lincoln, Davis, Lee, and Grant;
from their searing memories of the carnage of battle to their often
startling attitudes toward masters and liberators alike; and from their
initial jubilation at the Yankee invasion of the slave South to the
crushing disappointment of freedom's promise unfulfilled, The Slaves'
War is a transformative and engrossing vision of America's Second
Revolution.
