Title: A Masterpiece
Product review: This book, along with Foner's Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, provides extremely valuable insights into a crucial turning point in American history, which still resonates today. Both are masterpieces of synthesis and interpretation. Both are scholarly and detailed, yet convey a feeling of excitement at the events described. Both enable the reader to relive the tensions, aspirations, thoughts, and struggles of the times they describe. The 1995 reissue of Free Soil begins with an important essay by Foner, which he wrote for it.Foner was a Marxist-Leninist when he wrote both books. But he never allowed his Marxism to vitiate his historical analysis. On the contrary, he constantly emphasized that the motives that propelled the participants were ideas and ideals, not economic interest or social class (e.g., pages 4-5, 104-5, 110, 113, 168-76, 183-4, 304)
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