Brian Balogh sits down with Ed Ayers to talk about a project that’s been twenty-five years in the making. The first volume of Ayers' history, In The Presence of Mine Enemies, came out in 2003, and won the Bancroft Prize. It opened with John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859, and ended just before the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
Ayers has just published the second volume in the series: The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America. It picks up the story in 1863, and continues through 1870 and the ratification of the 15th Amendment.