Lecture on Douglass, Lincoln

Historian James Oakes, author of a new book on Abraham Lincoln and slavery, will give a talk, "Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Anti-Slavery Politics," at 4 p.m. Thursday, March 29, in the Alumni Room, Old Main, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois. The lecture, sponsored by the Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College, is free and open to the public.

Oakes, a professor of history in the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, recently published "The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics." The book studies the relationship between Douglass, an abolitionist who advocated equal treatment for African-Americans, and Lincoln, a politician who believed that even "the most righteous cause must have the support of public opinion," wrote a reviewer in the Christian Science Monitor.

Lincoln's views on race and slavery have been widely debated, and several authors have alleged that Lincoln was not opposed to slavery or to racial discrimination. Reviewing Oakes's book, historian James S. McPherson wrote in the New York Review of Books that Lincoln often "cloaked radical [antislavery] measures in conservative garb" that would be acceptable to a majority of Americans. "Douglass and many other contemporaries failed to understand Lincoln's political legerdemain," McPherson wrote. "Many historians have similarly failed. But Oakes both understands and appreciates it, and he analyzes [it] with more clarity and precision than anyone else..."

According to McPherson, Oakes shows that the difference between Lincoln and Douglass "was one of position and tactics, not conviction. Douglass was a radical reformer whose mission was to proclaim principles and to demand that the people and their leaders live up to them. Lincoln was a politician, a practitioner of the art of the possible, a pragmatist who subscribed to the same principles but recognized that they could only be achieved in gradual, step-by-step fashion through compromise and negotiation, in pace with progressive changes in public opinion and political realities."

Oakes's previous books include "Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South," and "The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders."

The Lincoln Studies Center at Knox College is engaged in research, publication, and public education on Abraham Lincoln and his legacy. Since 1997 the Center's co-directors have published six books on Lincoln, and are currently completing a new edition of the texts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Founded in 1837, Knox is a national liberal arts college in Galesburg, Illinois, with students from 45 states and 44 nations. Knox's 'Old Main' is a National Historic Landmark and the only building remaining from the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates.