| Preface to the 1995 Edition | |
| Acknowledgments | |
| Abbreviations | |
| Introduction | 3 |
| Ch. I | The Election of 1860 | 9 |
| Ch. II | Secession and the Coming of War | 29 |
| Ch. III | The Emancipation Issue: 1861 | 52 |
| Ch. IV | Emancipation and Public Opinion: 1861-1862 | 75 |
| Ch. V | The Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment | 99 |
| Ch. VI | The Negro: Innately Inferior or Equal? | 134 |
| Ch. VII | Freedmen's Education: 1861-1865 | 154 |
| Ch. VIII | The Creation of the Freedmen's Bureau | 178 |
| Ch. IX | Men of Color, to Arms! | 192 |
| Ch. X | The Quest for Equal Rights in the North | 221 |
| Ch. XI | The Ballot and Land for the Freedmen: 1861-1865 | 238 |
| Ch. XII | The Reelection of Lincoln | 260 |
| Ch. XIII | Schism in the Ranks: 1864-1865 | 287 |
| Ch. XIV | Andrew Johnson and Reconstruction: 1865 | 308 |
| Ch. XV | The Fourteenth Amendment and the Election of 1866 | 341 |
| Ch. XVI | Military Reconstruction and Impeachment | 367 |
| Ch. XVII | Education and Confiscation: 1865-1870 | 386 |
| Ch. XVIII | The Climax of the Crusade: the Fifteenth Amendment | 417 |
| Bibliographical Essay | 433 |
| Index | 451 |
