The fighting on the Virginia peninsula in the spring and early summer of 1862 took place in a region that included a large slave population. As George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac disembarked for what many thought would be the final campaign of the war, Virginia's slaves remained hesitant to see them as liberators -- in part, because the government's confusing contraband policy left them in a precarious position between freedom and slavery. According to Brasher, such a policy reflected the hope of many Northerners, both in the military and on the home front that the war could be won without disrupting the South's "peculiar institution."

This policy gradually proved to be untenable as slaves supplied the Union army with much needed intelligence and assistance behind the lines. More importantly, argues Brasher, it was reports of slaves in Confederate ranks, going back to the battle of First Manassas in July 1861, that proved decisive in shaping government policy. These reports quickly filtered back to Washington, where Radical Republicans and abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass used them to convince the president and the general public that a more aggressive policy against slavery was now a military necessity. The debate was no longer framed by abstract moral concerns, but by practical questions of whether slaves would support the Union or Confederate army.

Brasher is very careful in handling the evidence of armed slaves that filtered through camps and into northern newspapers, where they were clearly used for political purposes. Many of the reports of armed slaves were likely sightings of impressed slaves and body servants. While he concedes that some African Americans may have picked up arms and "even been caught up in the thrill of combat," the author is quick to add that "it is more likely that they were forced into service, deceived by their masters' tales about the designs of evil Yankees, or motivated by a desire to demonstrate their loyalty to owners when it was unclear who would win the war." While such a conclusion is not likely to satisfy Confederate apologists, who see loyal slaves behind every report regardless of the source, Brasher's analysis reflects the Confederate government's policy of slave impressment and continued resistance to any discussion of enlisting slaves as soldiers.

Part of the difficulty of explaining what motivated Virginia slaves comes from the lack of evidence in their own voice. Historians are relegated to approaching the subject of slave motivation indirectly -- either through Confederate accounts, which are weighed down by a deeply rooted paternalism, or from soldiers in the Union Army, who infused their letters with their own self-serving bias. This does not deter Brasher as he tracks the Union army's movements past Yorktown and Williamsburg to within earshot of Richmond's church bells. By the time the army reached the gates of Richmond, its collective position was clear: "blacks overwhelmingly and joyously welcomed the Yankees."