The Abolitionist Civil War: Immediatists and the Struggle to Transform the Union

The astonishing transformation of the abolitionist movement during the Civil War proved enormously consequential both for the cause of abolitionism in general and for the nation. 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 antislavery reformers, including those who supported the immediate abolition of the enslaved, 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 abolitionism but ultimately did little to promote racial justice for African Americans.