Prof. Levine’s most recent book is entitled Confederate Emancipation: Southern Plans to Free and Arm Slaves during the Civil War (2005).  It probes the public debate that dominated politics in the South during the last six months of the war, the controversy over whether to emancipate and arm slaves to fight on behalf of the Confederacy.  This book uses the rich, dramatic, and revealing record of that debate and its aftermath to explore racial and pro-slavery ideology, the real interaction of blacks and whites during the war, the nature of southern nationalism, divisions within the South’s white population, and the complex process of emancipation and Reconstruction.