The Radical and the Republican

“It comes as something of a shock to see just how much vulgarity Stephen Douglas was prepared to inject into his exchanges with Abraham Lincoln. (It is almost as shocking to watch how far Lincoln was willing to descend in his unsuccessful efforts to capture the low ground from the distinguished senator.) Were these the Lincoln-Douglas debates? One of the great highlights of American political discourse?”

In his introduction to The Radical and the Republican James Oakes tries to set the stage for what will come by immediately throwing the reader into the political climate of America in the 1850s: a volatile time in which the country was divided over the issue of slavery. Moreover, Oakes tries to reframe the narrative. By moving away from the mythology surrounding American history, especially that over Abraham Lincoln, Oakes wants his readers to understand that the truth is much more complicated than they might think. Not everything is cut and dry or black and white. Much of what will follow takes its cue from this chiaroscuro. Oakes wants readers to leave their preconceptions at the door and enter into the book willing to question what they might think they know not only about slavery in America but also about the book’s two main focal points: Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.

“Lincoln was a politician and Douglass was a reformer, and the difference, as either of them might have said, was at some point irreconcilable. As a politician Lincoln liked to position himself as the conservative, moved by forces greater than any one man. As a reformer Douglass preferred to position himself on America’s left flank; he would hold fast to the moral high ground no matter how great the forces arrayed against him.”

Continuing with setting the groundwork for the reader, here Oakes lays out the fundamental difference in how the reader must view the two men. It is not possible to take them on the same terms, Oakes argues, because they are beholden to two distinctly different modes of action and groups of people.