Quarles writes powerfully about the role of three-and-a-half million blacks in the South, who were impressed into non-c0mbatant service =building forts and entrenchments, working in factories and mines. In the North, black Americans fought with distinction on the front lines, shedding blood for an ideal-emancipation-that was cruelly betrayed during Reconstruction. The story of black Americans in the Civil War, in which they, in more ways than one, stood in the middle, was largely untold until this book by a distinguished scholar offered the wisdom and verve to make a great episode in history come alive. Benjamin Quarles, Professor Emeritus at Morgan State University, is the author of several outstanding works in black history, including The Negro in the Revolutionary War, Lincoln and the Negro, Blacks on John Brown, and a biography of Federick Douglass.