E-mail a friendJames Oakes
airdate April 6, 2007
James Oakes is professor of history and holds the Humanities Chair at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He's written several acclaimed works on slavery and the South, including Slavery and Freedom and The Ruling Race. His most recent book, The Radical and the Republican, is an account of two Civil War era icons—frontier lawyer Abraham Lincoln and former slave Frederick Douglass. It sheds new light on the central issues of slavery, race and equality in Civil War America.
James Oakes
Tavis: James Oakes is a professor of History at the City University of New York whose previous books about slavery and the South include "The Ruling Race". His latest book is called "The Radical and Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics". Professor Oakes, an honor to have you on the program.
James Oakes: Pleasure to be here.
Tavis: Thanks for your many years of work on this subject matter. To that point, what does it do for one to spend one's entire career studying slavery?
Oakes: Oh. You know, I wrote this book to sort of stop studying slavery. I wanted to write a book about people I liked instead of focusing on stuff I didn't like and on people I didn't particularly like. So this was actually for me a way of staying close to the subject I know and love, but sort of elevating my mood a little (laughter). I don't know how else to say it.
Tavis: (Laughter) You've invested how many years, though, in principal study on the issue, the institution of slavery? How many years?
Oakes: My whole career, twenty-five years.
Tavis: Twenty-five years on this issue?
Oakes: Yeah.
Tavis: I want to come back to this, seriously, when you say that this was a way to write abut people you liked and to kind of elevate your mood, that's what I meant when I asked what does it do for you. How do you navigate working on this very critical issue which can be, I suspect, depressing in a lot of ways for twenty-five years and an issue that many Americans think we, quite frankly, just ought to get over and get beyond anyway, as you well know?
Oakes: Wow. It's so hard to say because, inside the kind of womb of the academy, it's a kind of specialized academic subject and you just talk to other people who are doing the same thing and you just get wrapped up in that kind of ordinary academic discourse. But I do think that there is something, that the field even among historians is more emotional.
The disagreements among historians about these things get nastier - I don't want to say nastier - more visceral because they mean so much. This isn't about fiscal policy in the 1950s. This is about a central problem of American history and I think it's hard to keep an even keel.
Tavis: Before I get specifically here to Lincoln and Douglass, which I'm anxious to do, one last question on your discipline. To the everyday American who doesn't understand the value, doesn't have the kind of appreciation or embrace of what you and others do around studying this institution called slavery, for the benefit of the rest of us, you'd say what?
To put it another way, what's the value to everyday people of the work and the effort that you all put forth studying this institution that so many people want to avoid by any means necessary?
Oakes: For me, slavery is freedom turned upside down. And in a peculiar way, I find the study of slavery helpful for understanding what freedom means because you say, "What does it mean to be a slave?" Well, you take away all their freedom. Well, be specific. What are you taking away? And when I do that, I've come to a clearer sense of what it is that we have as free people.
We talk about ourselves as a nation that values freedom, that it's the freest people in the world, but we've got this monstrous thing buried there - not even buried. It's right out in the open for the whole first two centuries of American history. For me, it just clarifies what it is we're talking about when we're talking about freedom.
The book I'm working on now, for example, is the history of emancipation and it's another way for me of getting to what does it mean to become freed? What specifically does it mean to these people as they're going through their lives?
It's not about abstract, you know, all of a sudden the principles of the Declaration matter to my life. Well, they do, but it also means that nobody is going to knock on my door at night and take my family away from me or, when I need a place to go for help, I can go somewhere for help. I can go to my family. I can go to friends.
I just have these ordinary, everyday things I take for granted as a free person that helps me know by studying slavery. So that's one way for me to extract something useful and meaningful out of a subject that can otherwise be very, very difficult to study.
Tavis: It's a powerful formulation. Slavery is freedom turned upside down.
Oakes: Take the Declaration of Independence - not the Declaration, but the Bill of Rights. The slave codes in the United States in the southern states before the Civil War read like the Bill of Rights turned inside out. The right to bear arms? Slaves shall not bear arms. The right to freedom of assembly? Slaves shall not be allowed to assemble in groups of more than two. You just turn the Bill of Rights inside out or turn it upside down and you're getting very close to what it means to be a slave.
Tavis: That's a show in and of itself (laughter). I want to get right to the heart of this text for me, at least, that I find most interesting. The relationship between Lincoln and Douglass was a fascinating relationship.
Oakes: Oh, yeah. Really fascinating.
Tavis: Talk about it.
Oakes: It wasn't decades long. They met only three times, but each of those three meeting tells you something important about what each man was and they were all very different. The first time Frederick Douglass goes to Washington in the summer of 1863 to meet Lincoln, he's going because he's upset because they have, since the beginning of the year, since January 1, the day the proclamation is announced.
What people may not know is that one of the things the proclamation did on January 1 was say, for the first time since the nation was founded, that African Americans can fight in the United States Army. They'll be allowed to enlist. So it begins immediately and, as we know, by the end of the war, a hundred thirty thousand slaves will join the Union Army and become decisive in the struggle for their own freedom.
But by summer, Frederick Douglass is already getting upset by the fact that Black troops aren't being paid the same as white troops. The opportunities for advancement aren't the same for promotion of the military hierarchy. But in particular, when he goes to Washington, he's upset by the fact that the Confederacy has launched a policy of executing or enslaving any Black soldiers taken prisoner rather than treat them as prisoners of war. He wants Lincoln to initiate a retaliation policy to Confederate prisoners.
Well, a few days before he got to Washington, Lincoln did issue a retaliation policy, so they discussed why did it take you so long? You were a little slow in getting to this stuff, and things like that. Lincoln explains why he's reluctant to do this. He's afraid that you'll get to tit for tat and then it keeps escalating, they'll kill five, we'll kill ten and where does it stop, and that sort of thing. Douglass leaves that meeting thinking, you know, "I may disagree with this guy, but he's amazing."
Tavis: Let me fast forward. The second time they meet, Lincoln actually calls Douglass. He wants to seek his counsel a year later.
Oakes: That's right.
Tavis: He wants to pick Douglass's brain.
Oakes: Right. That, I think, is the most amazing meeting. It must be one of the most amazing meetings I've ever heard of. Here's the president of the United States. He thinks he's going to lose the election. It's August of 1864. He's afraid that, if he loses this election, whatever is left of slavery is going to stay there.
Because the only legal basis for emancipation at that point is the proclamation and that's only a wartime measure. He wants a Thirteenth Amendment, but if he loses, there's not going to be a Thirteenth Amendment. So he calls Frederick Douglass and says, "We need to get as many slaves freed under the proclamation as possible. Can you help?" And Douglass is shaken by that meeting. I mean, absolutely, of course, he's going to agree and he goes back home and he drafts a plan to do this.
It turns out that he doesn't need it, but mostly I think he realizes a couple of things. First, that emancipation isn't a done deal yet. He's been thinking ahead to reconstruction and Black voting and all this other stuff. It finally dawns on him leaving this meeting that "Oh, my God, we've got to get the slaves freed first before we can think about that."
But secondly, in terms of his relationship with Lincoln, he realizes how completely committed Lincoln has become to emancipation and the criticism of Lincoln stops when he leaves that room that second time.
Tavis: The third time they meet, Lincoln, to your point now, ends up winning and he invites Douglass to his inaugural.
Oakes: No, no. He invites Douglass to come and have tea at the Old Soldier's Home, but Douglass can't.
Tavis: That's right, that's right, previous engagement, exactly.
Oakes: So Douglass decides to go to the second inaugural. He goes and Lincoln gives this famous, beautiful second inaugural address about the sin of slavery, the entire nation is responsible -
Tavis: - but Douglass is outside and can't get in.
Oakes: Douglass is watching it. He decides he's going to go congratulate the president at the inaugural celebration and he can't get in. The guards won't let him. "We're under orders not to let any Blacks in." Douglass says, "This is nonsense. I don't believe it for a minute." He sends word in and immediately Lincoln says to let him in. There's a huge crowd in the room. These are two very tall men, so Lincoln sees Douglass come in and he shouts above the crowd, "My friend Douglass, come over. I want to talk to you."
Tavis: So Lincoln went out of his way to acknowledge Douglass in that room.
Oakes: That's right. And in front of everybody, he says, "I saw you in the crowd today listening to my inaugural address. What did you think of it?" There's thousands of people around and Douglass says, "Mr. President, there are a lot of people here who want to shake your hand. You don't need me. You don't need to hear what I thought of this."
Tavis: What is the abiding lesson you think we ought to take from the relationship between these two men? One Black, the other white.
Oakes: Well, in some ways, the lesson transcends the racial difference between them. That is, one of the points I make in the book is that the trouble they had with each other for a long time really comes down to the difference between what a politician is and what a reformer is. As I say in the book, in a democracy, you need to have people like Frederick Douglass who are constantly reminding us of what has to be done, what needs to be done. He pushes.
He's not just for the abolition of slavery. The minute the war starts, he's for Black troops. The minute there are Black troops, he wants Black troops treated equally. As soon as emancipation is established, he's for Black voting rights and equal rights. He always pushing.
Lincoln is an elected politician. He answers to a wider constituency that isn't necessarily affected, not only necessarily in favor of these things, but is very often very hostile to these kinds of things. But he's a very savvy politician and a very sympathetic politician and the tension between them often had to do with what a politician can do. Even as we know nowadays, how a president ought to stay within the limits of the law and a reformer who has to push further and must be there to push.
Tavis: Your story about the distinction between a politician and a reformer, a politician like Lincoln and a reformer like Douglass. That story just underscores that famous line that we all know. Every Black person certainly knows it and you certainly know that line of Douglass that "power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
The new book by James Oakes is called "The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics", a wonderful piece to get your hands on. Mr. Oakes, nice to have you here. Good to see you.
Oakes: My pleasure.
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