Leid Stories - A Powerful Alliance - 04/04/13

How the Emancipation Proclamation Changed the Civil War Forging an alliance with well-placed African American leaders and military tacticians who had been working secretly on their own as a national network to abolish slavery, Abraham Lincoln gained strategic advantage in his desperate efforts to quell rebellion by the Confederate states and create a nation. Dr. Hari Jones, assistant director and curator of the African American Civil War Memorial Freedom Foundation and Museum in Washington, D.C., and one of the foremost authorities on the role of African Americans in the Civil War, reveals the skillful quid-pro-quo negotiations between and among the shrewd parties that led to the Emancipation Proclamation and, ultimately, victory for the Union army. In riveting detail, Dr. Jones brings to life this crucial but not widely known détente, which eventually led to constitutional measures that freed an estimated 4 million slaves.