The Price of Freedom is a two-volume anthology of forty-eight articles addressing the political, social, and military aspects of slavery and the Civil War. This volume, The Preservation of Liberty, addresses the extraordinary implications of the conflict for African-American communities in the North and in the South and the opportunities borne of the war by which African-Americans, as citizens of the republic, demonstrated their desires and abilities to participate in the society and the country that emerged from the cauldron of conflict.