Historical Nonfiction

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.

—Abraham Lincoln, in a public letter. He had already drafted the Emancipation Proclamation, and would issue the preliminary one a month after the letter was published.