Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is popularly regarded as a heroic act by a great American president. Widely remembered as the document that ended slavery, the proclamation in fact freed slaves only in the rebellious South (and not in the Border States, where slavery remained legal) and, effectively, only in the parts of the South occupied by the Union. Questions persist regarding Lincoln's moral conviction and the extent to which the proclamation truly represented a radical stance on the issue of freedom. The eight distinguished contributors to this volume assess the procla