Reveals the political savvy and egalitarian convictions behind Lincoln's racial policies

In Lincoln and Black Freedom, LaWanda Cox takes issue with historians who have pictured Lincoln as a white supremacist moved by political expediency to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. She argues that Lincoln was a consistent friend of African-American freedom, and she speculates on how Reconstruction would have differed had Lincoln lived through his second term.

La Wanda Cox is professor emerita of history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

"No one who studies or admires Lincoln can afford to be without this landmark volume."—Governor Mario Cuomo