The South invested heavily in the practice of slavery, even more so than land, because slavery provided cheap labor for the major cash crop, cotton. The practice of slave ownership made up the economy of many Southern States and it took a war to end it. This necessary volume analyzes the human cost of this history and covers the long inroad to emancipation that was halted as a result of the war. Chapters describe the many thinkers and activists who pushed the conversation about emancipation further in the midst of national conflict and explains the realities of emancipation in the aftermath of the Civil War.