James Oakes | The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

Recorded February 2, 2021
In conversation with Eric Foner, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery and Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution, winner of the Bancroft, Parkman, and Los Angeles Times Book prizes.
James Oakes won the 2008 and 2013 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his scholarly work on the 16th President and the politics of abolition. His many books include Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South, The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics, and Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. He is the longtime Graduate School Humanities Chair at City University of New York. The Crooked Path to Abolition diagrams the Constitution-based course of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies.

[@brucevilla]

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[@soxfan1045]

Both professors neglect the main argument for slave colonization: the right of national self-determination. The argument at the time was that if you perceive ex-slaves as a nation, then they should be able to try their hand at self-determination too...just like the Americans did breaking away from the British. It wasn't simply resignation in the face of failed integration. It was the acknowledgment that blacks deserve the same shot as whites in breaking away from the oppression.

[@presterjohn1697]

Little known fact. Abraham Lincoln attempted to expel African-Americans to the following regions: 1.) Haiti 2.) British Honduras (Belize) 3.) Liberia 4.) Gran Colombia (Panama) James Oakes makes no mention of this in his book which is a massive red flag.

[@soxfan1045]

@@presterjohn1697 "expel"?? Are you referring to colonization?

[@presterjohn1697]

@@soxfan1045 No. Sending a unwanted population to another country does not constitute colonization. That was a selling point to get people to buy into this mass expulsion scheme.

[@soxfan1045]

@@presterjohn1697 this is ridiculously ahistorical. There was no fiendish masterplan to expel freed slaves as an "unwanted population," at least not on Lincoln and the Radical Republicans part. There was only a pre-war resignation to the fear that blacks and whites could never peacefully co-exist and so a new home needed to be found for black people for their own safety and liberty. But that resignation quickly dissolved in the course of the US Civil War in large part due to integration of the military. Radical equality under the law replaced the colonization plans.

[@presterjohn1697]

@@soxfan1045 Feel free to call it whatever you want. There is ample historical evidence of Lincoln trying repeatedly to deport African-Americans to the Caribbean, Central America and Africa. None of this is remotely vague (or) hard to determine. Lincoln was not the least bit concerned with the welfare of emancipated blacks, especially when you consider his policies toward Native Americans who were also forced from their homelands onto the reservation system, and massacred wholesale. The state-sponsored terror waged against Native Americans continued seamlessly under his administration. American Genocide by Benjamin Madley if you want to see a portion of this history summerized in book form.

[@vickihusman86]

I think he was very political..and he was very clever in knowing how much he could talk about race-especially in Illinois. He seems to know when it’s ok to say a little bit more- depending on his audiences and the exact times he’s in. As he became more popular , it seems to me, that he starts to open up a little more. But he HAD to be careful- he was well aware how unpopular his views were. He had to keep things close to the vest and remain mindful of all the hate that was out there for him. You can’t get anything done if you can’t get your foot in the door….

[@ApplemaxxMusicMedia]

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[@soxfan1045]

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