We are not talking here about mere bad frat-boy behavior or professorial eccentricity but about orchestrated campaigns to assault the fundamental lib… - Allen C. Guelzo

People today often want to separate slavery, and say that Lincoln was interested in preserving the union and not in destroying slavery. No, that gets it exactly wrong. The two are as knotted together as a rope, because the only union worth preserving is a union that has abjured slavery. So for Lincoln to get rid of slavery is to purge America of the aristocratic poison. He once said that slavery was the one retrograde institution that was poisoning the American republic, keeping the American republic from realizing its full potential.

The answer, then, to the question of who freed the slaves is not the slaves, and not even (as Blight tries to temporize) both the slaves and Lincoln. It was Lincoln's task—and Lincoln did it. This may not work to promote anyone else's self-esteem, but it did wonders for providing freedom.

Slaves who ran away in Pennsylvania to join Sir William Howe's occupation of Philadelphia or who ran away in Virginia to join Lord Dumore's "Ethiopian Regiment" found themselves dumped by their erstwhile allies in Nova Scotia or sold back into slavery in the Bahamas.