Winner of the 2017 Frederick Douglass Prize A groundbreaking history of abolition that recovers the largely forgotten role of African Americans in the long march toward emancipation from the American Revolution through the Civil War Received historical wisdom casts abolitionists as bourgeois, mostly white reformers burdened by racial paternalism and economic conservatism. Manisha Sinha overturns this image, broadening her scope beyond the antebellum period usually associated with abolitionism and recasting it as a radical social movement in which men and women, black and white, free and enslaved found common ground in causes ranging from feminism and utopian socialism to anti-imperialism and efforts to defend the rights of labor. Drawing on extensive archival research, including newly discovered letters and pamphlets, Sinha documents the influence of the Haitian Revolution and the centrality of slave resistance in shaping the ideology and tactics of abolition. This book is a comprehensive new history of the abolition movement in a transnational context. It illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave’s cause to the struggle to redefine American democracy and human rights across the globe. Honors include: Longlist title for the 2016 National Book Awards Nonfiction category - Winner of the 2017 Best Book Prize by the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic - Winner of the 2016 Avery O. Craven Award given by the Organization of American Historians - Honorable Mention in the U.S. History category for the 2017 American Publishers Awards for Professional & Scholarly Excellence (PROSE) - Winner of the 2017 Frederick Douglass Book Prize, jointly sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center at Yale University - 2017 James A. Rawley Award for the Best Book on Secession and the Sectional Crisis published in the last two years, Southern Historical Association "It is difficult to imagine a more comprehensive history of the abolitionist movement. . . . [Sinha] has given us a full history of the men and women who truly made us free."—Ira Berlin, New York Times Book Review "Lucidly written, compellingly argued and based on exhaustive scholarship, The Slave's Cause captures the myriad aspects of this diverse and far-ranging movement and will deservedly take its place alongside the equally magisterial works of Ira Berlin on slavery and Eric Foner on the Reconstruction Era. Ms. Sinha seems to have read just about everything ever written on the subject of antislavery, including diaries, broadsides, speeches and legal arguments by the famous and the obscure alike. It is a measure of her command of the material that even as she leads us through the deepest thickets of antebellum polemics she is rarely dull."—Fergus Bordewich, Wall Street Journal "A powerfully unfamiliar look at the struggle to end slavery in the United States. . . .  The Slave's Cause is as multifaceted as the movement it chronicles."—Matthew Price, Boston Globe "A stunning new history of abolitionism. . . . Placing abolitionism in its international context is just one of the great strengths of The Slave’s Cause . . . . [Sinha] plugs abolitionism back into the history of anticapitalist protest."—Adam Rothman, Atlantic "This well-written and accessible book has many strengths, but Sinha’s able deployment of so many sources makes it outstanding."—Olivette Otele, Times Higher Education "Rich and comprehensive."—Stephanie McCurry, Nation "[A] prodigious work of scholarship. . . . Manisha Sinha has cemented in place the last stone in the scholarly edifice of the past half century that has rehabilitated the abolitionists’ reputation."—James M. McPherson, New York Review of Books "A powerful, ambitious  work of scholarship. The research is extraordinary. . . . Her prose is also careful and often elegant, her argument bold. . . . Sinha offers us a glimpse of a usable past: a diverse and inclusive story of abolitionism."—Ari Kelman, Times Literary Supplement "Manisha Sinha's comprehensive and narrative-resetting new book gives readers their fullest and most readable account of America's battle against slavery."—Steve Donoghue,  Christian Science Monitor "[This] book, which traces the history of abolition from the 1600s to the 1860s, documents its international character and demonstrates the central role played by free and enslaved Blacks, is a valuable addition to our understanding of the role of race and racism in America."—Glenn Altschuler, Florida Courier "[A] comprehensive survey of the abolitionist movement in Colonial and independent America. . . . Covers a great deal of ground well. . . . Wide-ranging and admirably ambitious."— Kirkus Reviews "At once encyclopedic in narrative detail and broadly interpretive, squeezing new meaning from known figures and texts, and i