Tom Zoellner won a National Book Critics’ Circle award for ISLAND ON FIRE, about the uprising in Jamaica that led to the end of slavery within the British Empire. His new book, THE ROAD WAS FULL OF THORNS, argues that an improvised legal theory during the American Civil War — about slaves as “contraband” — led straight to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. President Lincoln at first just wanted to keep the Union together; the South wanted to preserve the “peculiar institution”; but a single incident at Fort Monroe in northern Virginia would change Lincoln’s mind, as well as American history.
Tom Zoellner is a journalist, essayist, and historian who also teaches at Chapman College in California, and edits at the Los Angeles Review of Books. This episode is free for all subscribers.
Platforms: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, Pocketcasts, etc.
Resources:
The Road Was Full of Thorns, by Tom Zoellner
Island on Fire, by Tom Zoellner
A Safeway in Arizona, by Tom Zoellner — about political violence in America
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