On New Year's Day in 1863, with the nation in the middle of a civil war, Abraham Lincoln signed a document that has become known as one of the most important in American history. There's been debate about the Emancipation Proclamation over the years, and a good bit of fuzziness in the popular consciousness about what it did and didn't do, and just how much Lincoln himself was responsible for toppling the institution of slavery. Eric Foner is Professor of History at Columbia University and the author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, which won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2011.
KCRW
