What do you think?
Rate this book
Cambridge Historical Studies in American Law and Society
Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment
Final Freedom looks at the struggle among legal thinkers, politicians, and ordinary Americans in the North and the border states to find a way to abolish slavery that would overcome the inadequacies of the Emancipation Proclamation. Michael Vorenberg tells the dramatic story of the creation of a constitutional amendment and argues that the crucial consideration of emancipation happened after, not before the Emancipation Proclamation; that the debate over final freedom was shaped by a level of volatility in party politics underestimated by previous historians, and that the abolition of slavery by constitutional amendment represented a novel method of reform that transformed attitudes toward the Constitution. Michael Vorenberg is an assistant professor of history at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He was a research assistant to David Herbert Donald for his prize-winning biography, Lincoln, and he is a contributor to the Journal of the Abraham Lincoln Association and the Reader's Companion to the American Presidency. This is his first book.
324 pages, Hardcover
First published July 11, 1997
10 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
Michael Vorenberg
14 books22 followersMichael Vorenberg is a professor of history at Brown University. His research takes place at the intersection of three fields in American history: Civil War and Reconstruction; Legal and Constitutional History; and Slavery, Emancipation, and Race.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 26, 2010
An excellent history of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I’ve read a lot of dull legal history lately, and this sparkles in comparison without losing an ounce of rigor. Lots of intricate political maneuverings and broad, sweeping social changes laid out with lucid grace. Particularly interesting to me for the discussion of the psychology of Constitutional amendment – depending on who you ask, the Thirteenth was the first amendment to radically revise the (proslavery) original text, or it was just an extension of the intrinsically antislavery document. I think it was the first, myself. This matters because Constitutional scholarship at the time pretty much was originalism – that’s what it would be, when your parents knew the guys who wrote the thing, right? This book is about all the cataclysms and upheavals and reverses that could make the stars and the congressmen align to get the amendment through, with hundreds of thousands dead and pamphlets about the evils of miscegenation on every street corner. As a portrait of a tumultuous time, and as an aid to the largely underground academic movement of Thirteenth Amendment revival scholarship, this book is a great success.
It’s an accidental success in exploring what an extraordinarily white history the Amendment has. And not just in the obvious – all the senators and representatives were white, (almost) all of the voters who elected ratifying bodies were white, the drafters were white. But I think the one major lapse in this book is the way it doesn’t seem really conscious of how the debate it describes is all about white people – about their guilt or their complicity or their racism or their fear. It’s not a blatant failure of the book, because this was, I think, what the debate was like. But the book should know that more consciously.
It’s an accidental success in exploring what an extraordinarily white history the Amendment has. And not just in the obvious – all the senators and representatives were white, (almost) all of the voters who elected ratifying bodies were white, the drafters were white. But I think the one major lapse in this book is the way it doesn’t seem really conscious of how the debate it describes is all about white people – about their guilt or their complicity or their racism or their fear. It’s not a blatant failure of the book, because this was, I think, what the debate was like. But the book should know that more consciously.
December 14, 2013
I met the author at the Dole institute of Politics several weeks ago. I was impressed by his knowledge of the 13th Amendment and his humility. Spielberg used his book in the Movie "Lincoln" and in my opinion he should have given Michael "top billing and thanks" for his research. This is one of the best books in my library on American history --a must read...
December 29, 2015
The screenplay for "Lincoln" was written by Tony Kushner and it is considered to be adapted from Doris Kearns Goodwin's "Team of Rivals." However, this far less heralded book from 2001 by Brown history professor Michael Vorenberg is the one you should read if you are interested in reading the real story behind the popular film.
Vorenberg's book is an interesting, detailed (although not mind-numbingly so) book about the adoption and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which is pretty much what the story of "Lincoln" is about. The fight to adopt the amendment was contentious and it did require Lincoln and Seward to engage in some horse-trading, but they got the job done.
Prior to the Secession Crisis of 1860, Congress did not think much of amending the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was added soon after the Constitution was ratified in order to satisfy the objections of many leading political figures. The 11th and 12th Amendments tidied up matters involving legal jurisdiction and some unforeseen consequences of how the president was chosen.
But, amending the Constitution to abolish slavery was considered revolutionary. In fact, it was considered so outside the way of thinking that many people argued in Congress that even considering adopting the 13th Amendment was itself unconstitutional. (The theory behind this was that Congress could not increase the powers of the Federal government and also that slavery was an inherent human right that could not be abridged.)
Later arguments against the amendment would be highly racist in nature. Opponents feared that the abolition of slavery would directly lead to "miscegenation" (a word that took hold in the U.S. around the Civil War) and the country would suffer from the intermarriage of whites and blacks. Other members of Congress could not picture a country where blacks had any civil rights.
The Senate passed the Amendment quite easily. The House battle was not too different from the way Spielberg and Kushner presented it. It was a tad less dramatic, but the vote was close, there were some shenanigans, there was a rumor of a peace overture from the Confederacy that Lincoln cleverly gave a non-denial denial of.
Once the House passed the Amendment, there was a great celebration. Lincoln signed the Amendment, even though presidents have no legal job to do in the passage of a Constitutional Amendment.
Ratification came after Lincoln's assassination, which combined with the Confederate surrender, led to numerous Southern states giving a push to the ratification totals. Some northern states were hesitant to ratify the Amendment, most notably Indiana, which had very restrictive laws regarding the employment of blacks. Georgia ended up being the state that made the 13th Amendment.
Vorenberg finishes up with an examination of how the 13th Amendment quickly fell by the wayside. Congress, although given powers to enforce the law, was not able to effectively do so. No one quite knew what the abolition of slavery really meant? Did it mean just that chattel slavery that existed in the South was forbidden or were there different work arrangements or economic conditions that were also forbidden?
Eventually, the 14th and 15th Amendments bolstered the civil rights cause in the U.S. and started to give black Americans more or less the same rights that white Americans did. Of course, it took (and still takes) Supreme Court decisions and Congressional legislation to guarantee those rights.
The 13th Amendment is in many ways symbolic. It not only served as an official stamp of freedom for many Americans, but it also served as a symbol to people that the Constitution could be a document that upheld the best of American principles, instead of its worst.
Vorenberg's book is an interesting, detailed (although not mind-numbingly so) book about the adoption and the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, which is pretty much what the story of "Lincoln" is about. The fight to adopt the amendment was contentious and it did require Lincoln and Seward to engage in some horse-trading, but they got the job done.
Prior to the Secession Crisis of 1860, Congress did not think much of amending the Constitution. The Bill of Rights was added soon after the Constitution was ratified in order to satisfy the objections of many leading political figures. The 11th and 12th Amendments tidied up matters involving legal jurisdiction and some unforeseen consequences of how the president was chosen.
But, amending the Constitution to abolish slavery was considered revolutionary. In fact, it was considered so outside the way of thinking that many people argued in Congress that even considering adopting the 13th Amendment was itself unconstitutional. (The theory behind this was that Congress could not increase the powers of the Federal government and also that slavery was an inherent human right that could not be abridged.)
Later arguments against the amendment would be highly racist in nature. Opponents feared that the abolition of slavery would directly lead to "miscegenation" (a word that took hold in the U.S. around the Civil War) and the country would suffer from the intermarriage of whites and blacks. Other members of Congress could not picture a country where blacks had any civil rights.
The Senate passed the Amendment quite easily. The House battle was not too different from the way Spielberg and Kushner presented it. It was a tad less dramatic, but the vote was close, there were some shenanigans, there was a rumor of a peace overture from the Confederacy that Lincoln cleverly gave a non-denial denial of.
Once the House passed the Amendment, there was a great celebration. Lincoln signed the Amendment, even though presidents have no legal job to do in the passage of a Constitutional Amendment.
Ratification came after Lincoln's assassination, which combined with the Confederate surrender, led to numerous Southern states giving a push to the ratification totals. Some northern states were hesitant to ratify the Amendment, most notably Indiana, which had very restrictive laws regarding the employment of blacks. Georgia ended up being the state that made the 13th Amendment.
Vorenberg finishes up with an examination of how the 13th Amendment quickly fell by the wayside. Congress, although given powers to enforce the law, was not able to effectively do so. No one quite knew what the abolition of slavery really meant? Did it mean just that chattel slavery that existed in the South was forbidden or were there different work arrangements or economic conditions that were also forbidden?
Eventually, the 14th and 15th Amendments bolstered the civil rights cause in the U.S. and started to give black Americans more or less the same rights that white Americans did. Of course, it took (and still takes) Supreme Court decisions and Congressional legislation to guarantee those rights.
The 13th Amendment is in many ways symbolic. It not only served as an official stamp of freedom for many Americans, but it also served as a symbol to people that the Constitution could be a document that upheld the best of American principles, instead of its worst.
January 25, 2022
I watched Lincoln (starring Daniel Day-Lewis) which made me aware of how much drama there was surrounding the passage of the 13th amendment abolishing the enslavement of African Americans.
In retrospect, it should have been obvious that there must have been legislative drama in order to pass an amendment with the support of 2/3 of each chamber of Congress during the Civil War.
This book had a great dramatization of those events and is a great read for anyone who has enjoyed Showdown at Gucci Gulch and similar books.
In retrospect, it should have been obvious that there must have been legislative drama in order to pass an amendment with the support of 2/3 of each chamber of Congress during the Civil War.
This book had a great dramatization of those events and is a great read for anyone who has enjoyed Showdown at Gucci Gulch and similar books.
January 31, 2023
An extraordinary history of how white-leaning the thirteenth amendment truly is.
May 28, 2016
A well-written, well-researched history of the coming of the Thirteenth Amendment. Vorenberg argues that the amendment’s passage was not inevitable, stresses the contingency of events, and describes the various reasons why Republicans, Democrats and the unionists in the border states came around to supporting it.
The author describes how Americans of the antebellum and Civil War eras were reluctant to make any revisions to the Constitution (although this point seems a bit underdeveloped, and might be more explainable by political rather than cultural reasons), and how only the scale and death toll of the Civil War came around to forcing a change in this mentality. Vorenberg also covers the effect that Northern military victories had on the evolution of abolition, the arguments over the amendment’s meaning, the politics surrounding the passage, and takes care not to exaggerate Lincoln’s role. From reading the book it also becomes clear that there was no real natural progression between the Emancipation Proclamation and the amendment.
A thoughtful work, although some more coverage of the ratification process would have helped.
The author describes how Americans of the antebellum and Civil War eras were reluctant to make any revisions to the Constitution (although this point seems a bit underdeveloped, and might be more explainable by political rather than cultural reasons), and how only the scale and death toll of the Civil War came around to forcing a change in this mentality. Vorenberg also covers the effect that Northern military victories had on the evolution of abolition, the arguments over the amendment’s meaning, the politics surrounding the passage, and takes care not to exaggerate Lincoln’s role. From reading the book it also becomes clear that there was no real natural progression between the Emancipation Proclamation and the amendment.
A thoughtful work, although some more coverage of the ratification process would have helped.
August 23, 2014
This book is about how the Emancipation Proclamation led to the Thirteenth Amendment. I found Michael Vorenberg's arguments and evidence to be convincing and I finished the book feeling really great about it. But I can't give it more than 3 stars because I had to read it for a class and the Civil War is not my thing, and I will never read it again. This book is best for Civil War enthusiasts - and only those who can handle the political side.
May 19, 2013
Tons of useful information but it felt a lot longer than its actual length
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews