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IPFS News Link • History

A LIBERTARIAN HISTORIAN'S MASTERPIECE ON THE CIVIL WAR

• http://fff.org, by Anthony Gregory

Not many volumes advance a radically revisionist thesis while maintaining proper respect for the mainstream historical literature. To do so with a topic as exhaustively explored as the American Civil War warrants special recognition. Jeff Hummel's survey treatment of the central event in U.S. history succeeds on both counts, which explains the praise it has drawn from Lincoln skeptics as well as from a range of more-conventional historians, including the late and venerable Kenneth Stampp, who praised Hummel's "impressive command of the relevant contemporary literature" and his interpretations as "well worth considering."

Hummel's Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men was originally published in 1996 and has just come out in a second edition, complete with a beautiful new introduction by the author, touching on some of the recent scholarship and replying to some of his critics, and a foreword by UC Santa Barbara Civil War historian John Majewski.


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