Lincoln and the Abolitionists

Lincoln and the Abolitionists PDF Author: Fred Kaplan
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062440012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Book Description
"Anyone who wants to understand the United States' racial divisions will learn a lot from reading Kaplan's richly researched account of one of the worst periods in American history and its chilling effects today in our cities, legislative bodies, schools, and houses of worship." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch The acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan returns with a controversial exploration of how Abraham Lincoln’s and John Quincy Adams’ experiences with slavery and race shaped their differing viewpoints, providing perceptive insights into these two great presidents and a revealing perspective on race relations in modern America Though the Emancipation Proclamation, limited as it was, ultimately defined his presidency, Lincoln was a man shaped by the values of the white America into which he was born. While he viewed slavery as a moral crime abhorrent to American principles, he disapproved of antislavery activists. Until the last year of his life, he advocated “voluntary deportation,” concerned that free blacks in a white society would result in centuries of conflict. In 1861, he reluctantly took the nation to war to save it. While this devastating struggle would preserve the Union, it would also abolish slavery—creating the biracial democracy Lincoln feared. Years earlier, John Quincy Adams had become convinced that slavery would eventually destroy the Union. Only through civil war, sparked by a slave insurrection or secession, would slavery end and the Union be preserved. Deeply sympathetic to abolitionists and abolitionism, Adams believed that a multiracial America was inevitable. Lincoln and the Abolitionists, a frank look at Lincoln, “warts and all,” including his limitations as a wartime leader, provides an in-depth look at how these two presidents came to see the issues of slavery and race, and how that understanding shaped their perspectives. Its supporting cast of characters is colorful, from the obscure to the famous: Dorcas Allen, Moses Parsons, Usher F. Linder, Elijah Lovejoy, William Channing, Wendell Phillips, Rufus King, Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew Johnson, Abigail Adams, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and Frederick Douglass, among scores of significant others. In a far-reaching historical narrative, Kaplan offers a nuanced appreciation of the great men—Lincoln as an antislavery moralist who believed in an exclusively white America, and Adams as an antislavery activist who had no doubt that the United States would become a multiracial nation—and the events that have characterized race relations in America for more than a century, a legacy that continues to haunt us all.

Lincoln and the Abolitionists

Lincoln and the Abolitionists PDF Author: Fred Kaplan
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062440012
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Get Book

Book Description
"Anyone who wants to understand the United States' racial divisions will learn a lot from reading Kaplan's richly researched account of one of the worst periods in American history and its chilling effects today in our cities, legislative bodies, schools, and houses of worship." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch The acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan returns with a controversial exploration of how Abraham Lincoln’s and John Quincy Adams’ experiences with slavery and race shaped their differing viewpoints, providing perceptive insights into these two great presidents and a revealing perspective on race relations in modern America Though the Emancipation Proclamation, limited as it was, ultimately defined his presidency, Lincoln was a man shaped by the values of the white America into which he was born. While he viewed slavery as a moral crime abhorrent to American principles, he disapproved of antislavery activists. Until the last year of his life, he advocated “voluntary deportation,” concerned that free blacks in a white society would result in centuries of conflict. In 1861, he reluctantly took the nation to war to save it. While this devastating struggle would preserve the Union, it would also abolish slavery—creating the biracial democracy Lincoln feared. Years earlier, John Quincy Adams had become convinced that slavery would eventually destroy the Union. Only through civil war, sparked by a slave insurrection or secession, would slavery end and the Union be preserved. Deeply sympathetic to abolitionists and abolitionism, Adams believed that a multiracial America was inevitable. Lincoln and the Abolitionists, a frank look at Lincoln, “warts and all,” including his limitations as a wartime leader, provides an in-depth look at how these two presidents came to see the issues of slavery and race, and how that understanding shaped their perspectives. Its supporting cast of characters is colorful, from the obscure to the famous: Dorcas Allen, Moses Parsons, Usher F. Linder, Elijah Lovejoy, William Channing, Wendell Phillips, Rufus King, Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew Johnson, Abigail Adams, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and Frederick Douglass, among scores of significant others. In a far-reaching historical narrative, Kaplan offers a nuanced appreciation of the great men—Lincoln as an antislavery moralist who believed in an exclusively white America, and Adams as an antislavery activist who had no doubt that the United States would become a multiracial nation—and the events that have characterized race relations in America for more than a century, a legacy that continues to haunt us all.

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

The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution PDF Author: James Oakes
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324005866
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
Finalist for the 2022 Lincoln Prize An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies. The long and turning path to the abolition of American slavery has often been attributed to the equivocations and inconsistencies of antislavery leaders, including Lincoln himself. But James Oakes’s brilliant history of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies reveals a striking consistency and commitment extending over many years. The linchpin of antislavery for Lincoln was the Constitution of the United States. Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action—in the western territories, in the District of Columbia, over the slave trade—they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act. He attempted to persuade states to abolish slavery by supporting gradual abolition with compensation for slaveholders and the colonization of free Blacks abroad. President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. Enslaved people who escaped to Union lines were declared free. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.

Lincoln and Slavery

Lincoln and Slavery PDF Author: Peter Burchard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0689815700
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
A biography of the sixteenth president which focuses on the issue of slavery and the importance it had throughout Lincoln's life from his early days as a lawyer through his presidency.

Lincoln and the Abolitionists

Lincoln and the Abolitionists PDF Author: Stanley Harrold
Publisher: SIU Press
ISBN: 0809336421
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Abraham Lincoln has often been called the “Great Emancipator.” But he was not among those Americans who, decades before the Civil War, favored immediate emancipation of all slaves inside the United States. Those who did were the abolitionists—the men and women who sought freedom and equal rights for all African Americans. Stanley Harrold traces how, despite Lincoln’s political distance from abolitionists, they influenced his evolving political orientation before and during the Civil War. While explaining how the abolitionist movement evolved, Harrold also clarifies Lincoln’s connections with and his separation from this often fiery group. For most of his life Lincoln regarded abolitionists as dangerous fanatics. Like many northerners during his time, Lincoln sought compromise with the white South regarding slavery, opposed abolitionist radicalism, and doubted that free black people could have a positive role in America. Yet, during the 1840s and 1850s, conservative northern Democrats as well as slaveholders branded Lincoln an abolitionist because of his sympathy toward black people and opposition to the expansion of slavery. Lincoln’s election to the presidency and the onslaught of the Civil War led to a transformation of his relationship with abolitionists. Lincoln’s original priority as president had been to preserve the Union, not to destroy slavery. Nevertheless many factors—including contacts with abolitionists—led Lincoln to favor ending slavery. After Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and raised black troops, many, though not all, abolitionists came to view him more favorably. Providing insight into the stressful, evolving relationship between Lincoln and the abolitionists, and also into the complexities of northern politics, society, and culture during the Civil War era, this concise volume illuminates a central concern in Lincoln’s life and presidency.

The Zealot and the Emancipator

The Zealot and the Emancipator PDF Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0525563458
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
From the acclaimed historian and bestselling author: a page-turning account of the epic struggle over slavery as embodied by John Brown and Abraham Lincoln—two men moved to radically different acts to confront our nation’s gravest sin. John Brown was a charismatic and deeply religious man who heard the God of the Old Testament speaking to him, telling him to destroy slavery by any means. When Congress opened Kansas territory to slavery in 1854, Brown raised a band of followers to wage war. His men tore pro-slavery settlers from their homes and hacked them to death with broadswords. Three years later, Brown and his men assaulted the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, hoping to arm slaves with weapons for a race war that would cleanse the nation of slavery. Brown’s violence pointed ambitious Illinois lawyer and former officeholder Abraham Lincoln toward a different solution to slavery: politics. Lincoln spoke cautiously and dreamed big, plotting his path back to Washington and perhaps to the White House. Yet his caution could not protect him from the vortex of violence Brown had set in motion. After Brown’s arrest, his righteous dignity on the way to the gallows led many in the North to see him as a martyr to liberty. Southerners responded with anger and horror to a terrorist being made into a saint. Lincoln shrewdly threaded the needle between the opposing voices of the fractured nation and won election as president. But the time for moderation had passed, and Lincoln’s fervent belief that democracy could resolve its moral crises peacefully faced its ultimate test. The Zealot and the Emancipator is the thrilling account of how two American giants shaped the war for freedom.

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery

The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery PDF Author: Eric Foner
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393080827
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 448

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Book Description
“A masterwork [by] the preeminent historian of the Civil War era.”—Boston Globe Selected as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times Book Review, this landmark work gives us a definitive account of Lincoln's lifelong engagement with the nation's critical issue: American slavery. A master historian, Eric Foner draws Lincoln and the broader history of the period into perfect balance. We see Lincoln, a pragmatic politician grounded in principle, deftly navigating the dynamic politics of antislavery, secession, and civil war. Lincoln's greatness emerges from his capacity for moral and political growth.

Visits with Lincoln

Visits with Lincoln PDF Author: Barbara A. White
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739164163
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 181

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Book Description
Visits with Lincoln provides a balanced and readable discussion of ten abolitionists, male and female, black and white, to visit President Lincoln in the White House during the Civil War. It paints a portrait of Lincoln through the eyes of the visitors, who include a variety of important historical figures-Jessie Fremont, Carl Schurz, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick Douglass, Anna Dickinson, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, and Sojourner Truth. Through their accounts, White traces changes in Lincoln's ideas and attitudes over the course of the war.

Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States

Abraham Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery in the United States PDF Author: Charles Godfrey Leland
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : United States
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


The Broken Constitution

The Broken Constitution PDF Author: Noah Feldman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374720878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice An innovative account of Abraham Lincoln, constitutional thinker and doer Abraham Lincoln is justly revered for his brilliance, compassion, humor, and rededication of the United States to achieving liberty and justice for all. He led the nation into a bloody civil war to uphold the system of government established by the US Constitution—a system he regarded as the “last best hope of mankind.” But how did Lincoln understand the Constitution? In this groundbreaking study, Noah Feldman argues that Lincoln deliberately and recurrently violated the United States’ founding arrangements. When he came to power, it was widely believed that the federal government could not use armed force to prevent a state from seceding. It was also assumed that basic civil liberties could be suspended in a rebellion by Congress but not by the president, and that the federal government had no authority over slavery in states where it existed. As president, Lincoln broke decisively with all these precedents, and effectively rewrote the Constitution’s place in the American system. Before the Civil War, the Constitution was best understood as a compromise pact—a rough and ready deal between states that allowed the Union to form and function. After Lincoln, the Constitution came to be seen as a sacred text—a transcendent statement of the nation’s highest ideals. The Broken Constitution is the first book to tell the story of how Lincoln broke the Constitution in order to remake it. To do so, it offers a riveting narrative of his constitutional choices and how he made them—and places Lincoln in the rich context of thinking of the time, from African American abolitionists to Lincoln’s Republican rivals and Secessionist ideologues. Includes 8 Pages of Black-and-White Illustrations

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent

Big Enough to Be Inconsistent PDF Author: George M Fredrickson
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674033736
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This book focuses on the most controversial aspect of Lincoln's thought and politics - his attitudes and actions regarding slavery and race. Drawing attention to the limitations of Lincoln's judgment and policies without denying his magnitude, the book provides the most comprehensive and even-handed account available of Lincoln's contradictory treatment of black Americans in matters of slavery in the South and basic civil rights in the North.