He received his AB, AM, and PhD, all in history, from Harvard University. Vorenberg's first book, Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment (Cambridge, 2001), deals with the making and meaning of the Thirteenth Amendment. His second book, Reconstructing the People: The Invention of Citizenship During the American Civil War, examines how elite and ordinary members of the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War translated notions of citizenship into law, policy, and manifest belief. He is currently working on a number of articles as well as a book on the Emancipation Proclamation. Before becoming a professor, Vorenberg was also a secondary school teacher. He has received numerous awards and fellowships for his writing and teaching.