The decades-long struggle to end slavery resulted in a violent national conflict. Prominent historian James Oakes in The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (W. W. Norton & Company, 2008) reveals the roles that two towering historical figures, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, played in the emancipation of slaves. As we read Oakes’ outstanding analysis, we will discover how Douglass, a fiery champion in the style of a 19th century romantic, and Lincoln, a methodical and restrained rationalist, ultimately came together. Oakes presents a fascinating intellectual history relying on a close reading of what Douglass and Lincoln wrote, argued, and published about slavery, race, and the Civil War. To place their extraordinary achievement in its historical context, we will also read The Long Emancipation: The Demise of Slavery in the United States by Ira Berlin (Harvard University Press, 2015) which frames the journey to freedom not as a singular event, but as a century-long, grassroots struggle driven primarily by the resilience and activism of Black Americans, who demanded their own freedom, using both direct resistance and legal advocacy to push the United States toward universal emancipation. Join us as we seek to understand how two men and a grassroots movement ultimately ended slavery.
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