ABSTRACT
Shortly after the Civil War, long-time abolitionistand Union colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson looked back with pride and optimism at the fight he and his troops had just helped win. For Higginson and other abolitionists, the war’s significance lay primarily not in the preservation of the Union but rather in the achievement of black freedom. By the time the war broke out, abolitionists-black and white, male and female-had been struggling for generations to end slavery.
