Freedom’s Delay: America’s Struggle for Emancipation, 1776-1865

The Declaration of Independence proclaimed freedom for Americans from the domination of Great Britain, yet for millions of African Americans caught up in a brutal system of racially based slavery, freedom would be denied for ninety additional years until the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. In Freedom’s Delay, Allen Carden probes the slow, painful, yet ultimately successful crusade to end slavery throughout the nation. This second edition, published as America celebrates its 250th birthday, probes the political divisions and racial strife still prevalent and questions the progress we’ve made since the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment in the face of discriminatory politics and racial inequality.

This work fills an important gap in the literature of slavery’s demise. Unlike other authors, who focus on specific periods or regional areas, Carden presents a thematically structured national synthesis of emancipation. Freedom’s Delay offers a comprehensive and unique overview of the process of manumission commencing in 1776 when slavery was a national institution, not just the Southern experience known historically by most Americans. In this volume, the entire country is examined, and major emancipatory efforts--political, literary, legal, moral, and social--are documented over the years from independence through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment.

Freedom’s Delay dispels many myths about slavery and abolition, including that racial servitude was of little consequence in the North; that abolition was a White man’s cause and Blacks were passive recipients of liberty; that the South seceded primarily to protect states’ rights; and that the North fought the Civil War primarily to end the subjugation of African Americans. Meticulously researched using a wide array of primary and secondary sources, this book reveals what actually transpired in the fight for human rights during this critical era. This second edition with a new afterword ensures that Freedom’s Delay will maintain a significant place in the literature of American slavery and freedom.

Allen Carden is professor emeritus of history and former president of Fresno Pacific University in California. He is the author or coauthor of four additional books on American history, including John George Nicolay: The Man in Lincoln’s Shadow published by the University of Tennessee Press.