Author Talk: The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War with Tom Zoellner

Friday, February 20  |  12pm – 1pm  |  Free, registration appreciated  |  Register Here

Join author and historian Tom Zoellner for an engaging and informative discussion on his latest book, The Road Was Full of Thorns: Running Toward Freedom in the American Civil War. Copies of Tom’s book can be purchased from the Civil War Museum gift shop and can be signed after the program.

In the opening days of the Civil War, three enslaved men approached the gates of Fort Monroe, a U.S. military installation in Virginia. In a snap decision, the fort’s commander “confiscated” them as a contraband of war.

From then on, wherever the U.S. Army traveled, torrents of runaways rushed to secure their own freedom, a mass movement of 800,000 people – a fifth of the enslaved population of the South – that set the institution of slavery on a path to destruction.

In an engrossing work of narrative history, critically acclaimed historian Tom Zoellner introduces an unforgettable cast of characters whose stories will transform our popular understanding of  how slavery ended. The Road Was Full of Thorns shows what emancipation looked and felt like for the people who made the desperate flight across dangerous territory: the taste of mud in the mouth, the terror of the slave patrols, and the fateful crossing into Union lines. Zoellner also reveals how the last powerful Americans changed the politics of war – forcing President Lincoln to issue the Emancipation Proclamation and opening the door to universal Black citizenship.