The Scorpion's Sting

Offers the best explication of the long history by which Americans embraced the legitimacy of military emancipation, and it offers great insight into the debate over which took precedence: the natural right to property or the natural right to freedom. -- Ira Berlin - Washington Post Beautifully argued and succeeds in telling us new things about a heavily explored topic. -- Mark M. Smith - Wall Street Journal In The Scorpion's Sting, Oakes surveys the legal doctrines that enabled President Abraham Lincoln to envision and then enact the Emancipation Proclamation...[It] will lead readers to reflect on the degree to which international law might hold significant implications for the American system of government. -- Walter Russell Mead - Foreign Affairs A brilliant book that will force even the most veteran student of antebellum America to rethink previously held assumptions about emancipation. -- Erik J. Chaput - Providence Journal In four swift, clear strokes, James Oakes has rewritten the history of emancipation in the United States. -- Allen C. Guelzo If any reader still questions whether the Civil War was about slavery, this book overcomes all doubts. -- James McPherson Incisive, imaginative, surprising, completely original-everything that one would expect from the most eminent historian of emancipation. -- Eric J. Sundquist In clear prose and with searing insight, James Oakes recovers the moral urgency and strategic vision behind the Republican drive to undermine the slave system. A work of great depth and empathy. -- Alan Taylor