A radical retelling of the drama of emancipation, from New York Times bestselling author and winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award “Zoellner is a beautiful writer, a superb reporter, and a deep thinker.” —The New York Times Book Review on The National Road 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 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