Richards's work hits the ground running, explaining Ohioan federal representative James Ashley's personal and political path toward passing the US Constitution's Thirteenth Amendment, and that it was this amendment, and not the Emancipation Proclamation, that finally freed America's slaves. The book proves valuable because it focusses on a person infrequently mentioned in the nineteenth-century political landscape, and, overall, Richards deftly handles the complexity of the book's title question. The book might be seen as a circularly political suspense story told in flashback, with each chapter focussing on the events leading up to the amendment's first failure to pass, the eventual successful second attempt, the arguments over the enforcement clause – this was the first amendment with an enforcement clause – and each state's ratification effort. Appendices A and B are especially helpful; the first has a timeline of events leading to passage, and the second is a historiographical note comparing this work with others on the same topic. The epilogue details an 1890s effort to save Ashley's writing and speeches from obscurity.

Richards's strength is walking the reader through the complex political and social machinations of the times, involving a large cast of politicians, political machines and social movements, all against the backdrop of America immediately before, during and after the Civil War. While the presentation of the information is somewhat disjointed between chapters, this is a necessity to describe all the viewpoints and motivations of the persons involved in the process, particularly from Ashley's perspective. This is especially true in the sixth chapter, wherein the book's title question is not answered, but rather the convoluted judicial and extrajudicial doings required for passage are laid out plainly, and on the whole are easy to follow; at the very least, Richards expertly makes it clear that there is no clear answer to the title question, one which, barring new evidence being discovered, may be unanswerable altogether.

Ashley is not accused directly of corruption in orchestrating the “backroom deals” in which other Congressmen were bribed with coveted government posts – repeatedly, the author states the evidence either for or against Ashley is inconclusive, as it is also for several other alleged accomplices, only saying that he was directly empowered by Lincoln to negotiate on Lincoln's behalf (205). It would seem that if Ashley was as much an anti-slavery zealot as described, he would have stooped to bribery to amend the Constitution. Ashley is repeatedly portrayed as an anti-slavery crusader in the extreme, lambasting pro-slavery Democrats and Republicans alike at every opportunity, but only once are his prejudices against blacks mentioned (14). These are not detailed any further, though this would have been interesting to describe, and if the historical record was starved here for want of evidence, the author should have said so. The information is conspicuous by its absence, and mars an otherwise fully fledged, if perhaps too laudatory, account of Ashley's political career. This contrasts with the author's account of Lieutenant Robert Gould Shaw, leader of the famed all-black 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, where there is evidence given for Shaw's racist remarks (86).

There are stumbling blocks to Richards's style, however. The writing at times suffers from redundancy, hyperbole and unnecessarily rhetorical questions. More than once the reader will find such overly broad statements as “Democrats went ballistic” (160). There are rhetorical questions which are immediately answered in the following sentence (64). At times the writing style becomes judgmental without evidence. For example, while discussing Lincoln's Congressional allies, Richards describes them as “too busy denouncing the Irish and the Catholic Church to have any time for race baiting” (159). Accusations of race baiting and denouncements from that can be justified with evidence, but to paint a group with such a broad brush is intellectually weak. There is occasionally some redundant phrasing. In one example, Richards writes, “For most border state men, supporting Lincoln's compensation plan was out of the question. It took too much political courage. The folks back at home wouldn't stand for it. It was tantamount to committing political suicide” (55). While incidents like these appear repeatedly, they do not erode factual accuracy.

Despite what at times can make for clumsy reading, Richards's work should be required for a greater understanding of nineteenth-century American political, social and legal history, because it describes a person all but forgotten and how he managed, if perhaps by less than sterling means, to add a necessary improvement to American law.