Lincoln and the Abolitionists: John Quincy Adams, Slavery, and the Civil War
- ISBN-10
- 0062440012
- ISBN-13
- 9780062440013
- Category
- History
- Pages
- 416
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2017-06-13
- Publisher
- HarperCollins
- Author
- Fred Kaplan
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.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution
By James OakesBut 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.
-
Visits With Lincoln: Abolitionists Meet The President at the White House
By Barbara A. WhiteVisits 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.
-
Lincoln, the South, and Slavery: The Political Dimension
By Robert W. JohannsenThe four chapters that compose this work connect Lincoln’s position with his attitude toward the South and Southerners, from his initial appeal to Southerners at a time when he sought to revitalize the dying Whig party, through his ...
-
The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery
By Eric Foner“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 ...
-
Lincoln and the Abolition of Slavery
By Russell RobertsDiscusses Abraham Lincoln's role in the abolition of slavery, as well as the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation.
-
Lincoln and Slavery
By Peter BurchardA 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.
-
The Zealot and the Emancipator: John Brown, Abraham Lincoln and the Struggle for American Freedom
By H. W. Brands"What do moral people do when democracy countenances evil?
-
Abraham Lincoln and the Road to Emancipation, 1861-1865
By William K. KlingamanGraebner, Norman A., ed. Freedom in America: A 200-Year Perspective. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. ———, ed. Politics and the Crisis of 1860. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1961.
-
Father Abraham: Lincoln's Relentless Struggle to End Slavery
By Richard StrinerSee T. Harry Williams, Lincoln and His Generals (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1952), Vintage edition, 42–43. Allen C. Guelzo, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation: The End of Slavery in America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004) 5.
-
Lincoln and Emancipation
By Edna Greene MedfordBy including African American voices in the emancipation narrative, this insightful volume offers a fresh and welcome perspective on Lincoln’s America.