"The 'discovery' is made that although slaves were emancipated, race relations did not essentially change. In this interpretation, slavery becomes the dependent variable in the historical equation. Racism is the independent variable, the enduring value in American politics and society. From this perspective, the motives of the free soil and antislavery movements are questioned on the ground of self-interest and denied genuine moral standing. Defense of the Union is divorced from the antebellum controversy over the extension of slavery into the territories. Abstracted from the ideology and aims of the Republican Party, the goal of preserving the Union is viewed simply as a project for aggrandizing national power; a project that includes permanent defense of existing slavery. Meaningful antislavery motives are attributed only to slaves, who in recent accounts are viewed as principally responsible for initiating the process of emancipation. Lincoln and the Union high command, their vision clouded by racial conservatism, stand in need of instruction in the ways of genuinely higher moral purpose by the slaves themselves, whose flight to freedom transformed the war for the Union into an abolitionist crusade."