The author presents, for the first time, a full scale study of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Using unpublished letters and documents, little-known accounts from Civil War-era newspapers, and Congressional memoirs and correspondence, the author tells the story of the complicated web of statesmen, judges, slaves, and soldiers who accompanied, and obstructed, Abraham Lincoln on the path to the Proclamation. The crisis of a White House at war, of plots in Congress and mutiny in the Army, of one man's will to turn the nation's face toward freedom —all these passionate events come alive in a powerful narrative of Lincoln's, and the Civil War's, greatest moment.