lanterns floating in the river. ? ♪ > next american history tv, historian james aokes. lincoln prize winning author of numerous books about slavery, discusses the evolution of president lincoln's antislavery politics. professor oakes describes the abolitionist movements and how they help transform the politically cautious lincoln into an emancipator and how lincoln influenced the abolitionists. this program was hosted by the lincoln group of the district of columbia. [applause] i'm vice president of the

lincoln group of the district of columbia's. it is my pleasure this evening ,o introduce o dr. james oakes distain is professor of history at the university of new york graduate center. he began his academic career as a student of one of the greatest mid 20th century exponents of the causes of the civil war. and an understanding of slavery. and that is professor kenneth stannon. before he speaks, i want to mention some of the works he is well known for. in early work called "slavery and freedom." wonderful dual biography of abraham lincoln and frederick douglass, "the radical and the republican." the lincoln award-winning freedom national, the destruction of slavery 1861 to

1865. and most recently, a little collection of essays called "the , antislaverying and the coming of the civil war." i will leave these on the table and you can look at them afterwards and maybe decide to order one or two. so, without any more introduction, professor james oakes. [applause] prof. oakes: going to take me a minute to get my paper out here. that's the right one. well, thank you all for coming.t thank you for that introduction. thank you, karen. were conspiring

against this event it is not just amtrak, but i spent the weekend in bed with a horrible cold and you will hear some of that tonight. this rainstorm almost made it impossible for me to -- but i'm here. and i'm supposed to talk in may. when i was supposed to talk about i think was lincoln's legacy. see where i can put this. this may be trouble, folks. so, as you all know, we have just passed through the 150th anniversary of the assassination. so, this is the appropriate moment to think about his legacy. ved not surprisingly, i'be been invited to do so but i have to confess that i am always intimidated. there are two reasons. the first is the fact that lincoln was assassinated raises the stakes in any discussion of

his legacy, his murder at the war,f the terrible instantly transformed him from a president into something more like a secular saint. to philly, from a great president to a martyr. i can talk about presidents, but i really cannot talk about saints. i can even explain why a think lincoln was a great president, but i have nothing to say about martyrdom. at least nothing that might not end up sounding cynical or irr religious. whenever i talk about lincoln, i feel the need to bring the discussion back to work. -- to earth. the second problem has to do with the notion of legacy. there are historians out there at drawingy good lessons from the past, people who can go on to the news hour and explain the immediate rooseveltof say teddy foreign policy to the crisis in reparationsor

forced to pay after world war i and how that relates to the current financial crisis. i'm not very good at that sort of thing. lessons of history do not spring easily into my mind when i'm sitting in my living room in the morning reading "the new york times." "times" had a good essay on the german reparations and the current fiscal crisis. for me, history is about things a happen a long time ago in the things were when very different. as i say, there were plenty of good historians who are better than i have at digging around the past and digging up the past and coming up with gems we can all admire in the here and now. think of myself as one of those. i have been reluctant to talk untillincoln's legacy, something that happened that at first might seem completely

unrelated. it was the movie "selma." it cost a bit of a stir. you know the movie. it is about the famous march from selma to montgomery that was organized by martin luther king and others as part of a campaign to pressure president johnson to support the voting's right act of 1965. i it was a good movie. i think some of the criticisms are fair. specifically many of my fellow historians have complained about the way it depicts president johnson's relationship to the civil rights movement. was he the reluctant advocate of the voting rights act, someone who moved only one forced, almost against his will to do so by the militant tactics of king and his protesters? or was johnson the forceful political leader who brought the thing to the home stretch? got the job done as hillary

clinton said several years ago when she was first running for president. she got into trouble for saying something like that. theore general terms, questions raised by the controversy over "selma" are similar to the questions i am interested in. except in my case, it is not lyndonincoln -- johnson's relationship to the civil rights movement. it is about abraham lincoln's elation should to the abolitionist movement. that is where i am inclined to look whenever i think about lincoln's legacy. was not a civil rights activist but turned out perhaps to be the president who in hillary's terms "got the job done." lincoln was not an appalachian us but turned out to be the with his who, along fellow republicans in congress, ended up implanting the abolitionist agenda. that is what i'm going to talk about this evening. abraham lincoln's relationship

to the abolitionist movement because, as i said, that is where i think his legacy lies. and that is where i see evidence of lincoln's greatness as a president. so, with your indulgence, i'm going to spend the next several minutes talking not about lincoln but about anti-slavery politics. end i will windy my way back to the subject of lincoln's legacy. among commonplace historians that abraham lincoln was not enable us this. there are solid reasons for believing this, not least of which was that lincoln himself distanced himself from the movement in 1837. in his first public declaration, lincoln said slavery was based on injustice and that policy and that abolitionists did more harm than good. he did not talk like an abolitionist, either. the never called for the immediate abolition of slavery.

he never denounce the slaveholders as sinners or condemned the constitution as a covenant of hell. he never endorsed slave rebellion or advocated repeal of the illinois laws discriminating against blacks. he published clinical trash -- polemical trush but he never wrote for an abolitionist newspaper. he spoke at colonization society meetings but he never spoke at an abolitionist meeting and never joined an abolitionist society. he never said the federal government should help destroy slavery by surrounding the southern states with what abolitionists called a cordon of freedom. he never uttered the metaphor among republicans that likens slavery to a scorpion that surrounded by fire would sting itself to death. an abolitionist and never claimed to be. but he also pointed out that lincoln was part of a broader

anti-slavery movement that embraced far more americans than the smaller, more militant abolitionist movement. this raiesses the question -- wt was the relationship between abolitionism and this anti-slavery movement or what is the difference between the two and specifically what is lincoln 's relationship to the abolitionists? i amswer that question, going to narrow my focus to the point where the two movements intersected and that point -- abolition itself was a broader movement. it was a radical movement that embraced americans who were formally excluded from the political system. tens of thousands of women, all of them disenfranchised, but actively engaged in the abolitionist movement. tens of thousands of free blacks, most of whom were denied the right to vote, but also actively engaged in the abolitionist movement. so, strickler speaking, the

abolitionist movement was not in -- district was speaking, the abolitionist movement was not a political movement. tly speaking. above all, abolitionism was dedicated to publicizing the evils of slavery. eeches, campus, new savers, rallies, petitions. all with the goal of persuading americans to wake up to the problem, the national problem of slavery. alsobolitionists were present the people. they understood that in the end the solution had to be political. framed abolitionists their arguments and careful, legal and constitutional terms. they worked hard and with remarkable success to formulate a politically viable anti-slavery platform. an agenda, a series of specific policies that were designed to

stop and refers the expansion of slavery. policies that would, as lincoln later put in, put slavery on a course of extension. to that end, abolitionists drew on a long history of anti-slavery activism in the early republic. in order to understand lincoln, we have to understand that history. in particular, we have to understand one fof the crucial assumption that almost every american, including the most radical abolitionist to the most reactionary proslavery conservatives, accepted be sort -- before the civil war the consensus, that is everyone agreed, everybody agreed that the constitution did not allow the federal government to abolish slavery in a state. or to interfere with slavery in already existed

which raises the obvious question -- how did the national abolitionist movement expected to use the federal government to get slavery abolished in the southern states if the constitution did not allow the government to do that? to first abolitionist answer that question came from a mann named benjamin lundy. in september 1821, shocked by the south's defeat by the attempt to acquire missouri -- responded to the missouri crisis, once he began publishing a newspaper called "the genius of universal emancipation." in the very first number, he oint program 7-p designed to get slavery abolished. things the federal government could do that would cause the states to abolish slavery. the federal government should ban slavery from the territories. it should abolish slavery in

washington, d.c. suppress the slave trade, paid for the colonization of the immigration of free slaves to haiti or preferably to western territories where they would block the expansion of slavery and come into the union as free states. ndy did not ask that congress interfere with slavery in the states directly. call for an emancipation proclamation. he did not propose a 13th amendment. coherentanted was a set of federal policies that would stop slavery's expansion and encourage the states to begin to abolish slavery on around. process ofstart the state-by-state ebullition that had stopped unexpectedly with new jersey in 1804. movedl years later, lundy to baltimore and invited a

protége to help him edit his anti-slavery newspaper. one young editor's name was of lloyd garrison. within a few years, garrison would become the most vocal and most famous abolitionist in the united states. yet, although he remained known for the militancy of his rhetoric and tactics, garrison's agenda was essentially the same one formulated by his mentor, benjamin lundy. the clearest expression of that agenda can be found in the declaration of sentiment, the preamble to the constitution of the american anti-slavery society, both of which garrison wrote in philadelphia in december, 1833. ndom the start, garrison a fellow abolitionists acknowledge the constitution did not allow the federal government to interfere with slavery in the

states. "we fully and unanimously recognize the sovereignty of each state to legislate exclusively on the subject of slavery which is tolerated within its limits." adding that" we concede that congress under the present constitution has no right to interfere with any of the slave states in relation to this momentous subject." allill, however, do lawfully within our power to bring about the extension of slavery. and in article ii he became specific. the society would "in denver -- endeavor in a constitutional way to put an end to the domestic slave trade and abolish slave territories, especially the district of columbia, and likewise, prevent the extension of it to any state that may hereafter be admitted to the union." these policies in place,

the federal government would tilt the balance of federal power in ways that favored the spansion of freedom over the expansion of slavery. and the steady erosion of slavery. that agenda is going to change the specifics of that agenda are going to change over time. certain things will drop out. the supreme court clears the domestic slave trade off limits for a number of reasons. the agenda.pfff when congress passes the it goes ontoe act, the agenda. but the basic idea remains the same. and in the 1840's, antislavery thatals had transformed agenda, that lundy and garrison had developed, the proposal they had for related, into a

concrete, political platform endorsed by the liberty party in 1848, by the free soil party. that agenda got a name. congress would surround yourself with what was called a cordon of freedom, free oceans, free states, free territories. federalg slavery of all support and of any protection beyond the borders of play states themselves. thereby encouraging slavery to die a natural death. the government would not administer the fatal blow. rather "like a scorpion girt by fire, slavery would sting itself to death." abolitioniste agenda. oftorians has spent a lot time talking about abolitionist ideology, abolitionist theology, abolitionist culture, abolitionist hatred of lincoln who was the most radical? they've never really bothered to look at the actual agenda, the

policy and proposals they have for getting rid of slavery. when you do that, all sorts of interesting things start to appear in the history of this crisis. so, we have the agenda. and having specified it this way -- it's now possible, for example, to turn to abraham lincoln and take another look at the question i'm asking this evening -- what is lincoln's relationship to the abolitionist movement, or to put the question in a different form, how much of that abolitionist agenda was lincoln committed to? the answer it turns out is most of it. by 1861, the year he became president, lincoln was public the committed to ebullition in washington, d.c., banning slavery from the western territories, revising the fugitive slave act, and suppressing slavery on the high seas. by then, lincoln had also adopted the most important principles of abolitionism as

well. he did not support slavery claim that the decoration of independence applied -- applied and to white people argued that black and white for equal entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. and lincoln argued that the slaves were not protected as property under the constitution. let's take a closer look at those positions. first, in 1837, lincoln is a wig, serving in the illinois legislator representing springfield. in washington, d.c., there is a congressional fight underway caused by the flood of petitions sent by abolitionists demanding abolition in washington, d.c. southerners responded to that campaign in two ways. one of which is familiar and one is not. first, they impose the notorious

gag rule, that automatically tables all antislavery petitions. that we know about. they also did something else. southern states send lists of formal demands to northern states. demanding that those states formerly repudiate all efforts to abolish slavery in washington, d.c. and suppress abolitionist societies in their states. mollify thet to south, the illinois legislator responded with a series of robert -- resolutions denouncing abolitionism and did clearing that abolition of slavery in d.c. would be "a monstrous act of bad faith." lincoln is one of only six legislators to vote against this resolutions and a few weeks later, he and one other legislator, dan stone, issued a formal protest. they declared that slavery was based on both injustice and bad policy and more, specifically,

insisted that congress had the toer under "the constitution abolish slavery in the district of columbia." that wording is not accidental. proslavery extremists have justified the gag rule on the grounds that slaves were a form of property. efore, congress could not abolish slavery without trampling the property rights of slaveholders. congress should refuse to accept abolition petitions. they should be gagged, because they were demanding that congress do something it could not legally do under the constitution. abolitionists responded to that argument by claiming the constitution recognized slaves only as "persons held to service, never as property." in short, there was no constitutional right of property in slaves. congress could, under

the constitution, abolish slavery in washington, d.c. that was the very language that 183y whened inthe the 37 whenared -- om 18 he declared that congress could abolish slavery he was taking as the abolitionist position. 1840's in the mid lincoln staked out a second position that congress should ban slavery from the western territories. on october 3, 1845, lincoln wrote a letter to an abolitionist explaining that "i hold it to be a paramount duty of the free states to let slavery of the other states alone." standard stuff. hand, we should

never knowingly lend ourselves directly or indirectly to prevent slavery from dying a natural death or allow it to find new places for it to live when it can no longer exist in the old." 's language lincoln is important because it echoes the language garrison had inserted into the 1833 constitution of the american anti-slavery society. congress had no power to abolish slavery in the states where it existed, but it should neither allow slavery to expand into new it do , nor should anything to hinder slavery's "natural death within the slave states." to congresselected shortly thereafter. when he arrived in washington, another debate over slavery was already roiling over the famous wilmont proviso introduced by the pennsylvania democratic slaverymanto ban all

from all the territories acquired by the united states in its war against mexico. the struggle over the wilmont proviso came up repeatedly and in every one of those votes, lincoln supported a ban on slavery in the territories. repeatedly inted favor of every bill, resolution, or petition calling for abolition in washington, d.c. he even drafted his own bill for that purpose. 1849, when his one and only term in congress came to an end, lincoln was on record in his speeches and his votes in favor of banning slavery from the western territories and abolishing it in washington, d.c. 1850, congress passed that infamous fugitive slave act of protests in the north prompted in large measure by a series of notorious attempts to rescue escaped slaves from the clutches of

federal authorities. was precisely the deployment of federal troops and commissioners to assist southern masters and the rendition of their fugitive slaves on northern soil that was so controversial. many northern states had passed personal liberty laws designed to thwart southern slave catchers by guaranteeing those accused of being runaways of frightful due process. process.ul due you cannot just take a person off the street and put them back in slavery. the fugitive slave act overrode all of those state laws making the federal government the chief enforcement agent of the fugitive slave clause of the constitution. like most northerners, lincoln andd the fugitive slave act began to argue it should be revised. ofthe fugitive slave clause the constitution implied that the federal government should enforce it, it also necessarily imply that the federal government could determine on

its own how to enforce it. put different way, the southerners were going to demand the federal government enforce the fugitive slave clause over and against northern state personal liberty laws, then those southerners had to accept the fact that congress was free to enforce the clause by passing what amounted to a national personal liberty law. twice during the secession crisis, lincoln offered the upper formal to the south. federal government will accept responsibility for enforcing the fugitive slave clause of the constitution, but it will only do so in a way that respected what lyndon called "the privileges and immunities to which all citizens are entitled." that's due process. redundant, of being i'm going to point out once again that that language that lincoln was using was critical. earlier, the chief justice had declared in the dred scott decision that blacks were not and never had been citizens

of the united states. a fugitive slave law only apply to african-americans. almost by definition since only blacks were enslaved. it was racial slavery. so, when lincoln said that a revised fugitive slave act should respect "the privileges and immunities to which all citizens are entitled," he was contradictory the claim that blacks were not citizens of the united states. once again, lincoln was seen taking a position most commonly associated with abolitionists. this brings me to the fourth and last of the issues i wanted to discuss. this one has nothing to do with the specific policies of abolishing slavery in d.c. instead, it has to do with the basic principles of radical which was racial equality. from the 1780's through

reconstruction, abolitionists disturbers themselves not simply by their principled opposition to slavery but also by their commitment to racial equality. african americans were entitled to their freedom, abolitionist argued, because the principle of fundamental equality upon which the nation was founded applies to white and blacks like. and slaves were enhanced -- were emancipated and abolitionists argued that free blacks should be incorporated into the body politics as full citizens with all the privileges and immunities to which all citizens are entitled. now, it should be obvious that abraham lincoln took almost exactly the same positions on racial equality, beginning with his first major anti-slavery speech in 1854, lincoln repeatedly argued that the promise of fundamental human equality in the declaration of independence applied to whites and blacks like. claimer stephen douglas's

that settlers in the territory should be free to choose slavery based on what he called "popular sovereignty." for douglas's position to qualify as popular sovereignty, lincoln said, you have to assume black people can be treated as a -- as property. but if the negro is a man, my faith tells me that all men are created equal. he decried attempts by democrats to restrict the principles of jefferson's declaration to white men only. had expandedoln his racial egalitarianism to include not only the fundamental rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but also to the broader privileges and immunities of citizenship. by the time he became president, in support on record of most of the major principles and policies associated with the abolitionist movement.

nor was he a johnny-come-lately. in some cases, his record stretched back decades. he endorsed abolition in washington dc and he would impede the slaveholders in their efforts to recapture pubic -- fugitive slaves in the north. that blacks and whites were equally entitled to the same fundamental rights, above all, the right to freedom. lincoln was also committed to the active suppression of slavery on the high seas. i have also pointed out he endorsed the single most important proposition of antislavery constitutionalism, that there is no such thing as a constitutional right of property in slaves. to make my point, were enough to raise the question, if by the time he became president, lincoln had endorsed nearly all the

principles and policies of the abolitionists. keepo we need -- why do we saying lincoln was not an abolitionist? if lincoln consistently endorsed the most radical principles and policies of the antislavery movement, why do historians just as consistently refer to lincoln as a moderate? why, in a series of distinguished monographs, does the story tell us repeatedly that lincoln was profoundly, fundamentally a conservative? part of the answer lies in the peculiarly narrow frames of restaurants historian -- frames of reference historians have. lincoln can be labeled a moderate republican in the 1850's, but in the 1850's, this is when the central political issue of the day was slavery, the spectrum of public opinion stretched far to the right of the republican party.

to borrow the familiar categories we take from the french revolution, the right wing of american politics in the 1850's was firmly and unambiguously occupied by proslavery southerners, especially southern democrats and especially in the deep south. the centrists of the 1850's may have been including constitutional unionists of the upper south states, and northern democrats. the republicans occupied the left wing of american politics in the 1850's, so when we say lincoln was a moderate, it can only mean he was a moderate within the left wing of the american political spectrum. that puts him pretty far to the left. there is a second frame of reference historians used to label him a moderate. it is more appropriate for the point i make. lincoln was a moderate compared to the abolitionists and the radical republicans. -- it probably seems

obvious that my response to that , given what i have already said, is that it is wrong. on the most important and substantive policies and principles, lincoln's positions were perfectly in accord with the abolitionists. but that is not what i'm going to say. because this is the point in my talk when i nudge you towards my conclusion about lincoln's legacy. i need to backtrack a little to do that. take a closer look at each of the positions and principles i attribute to lincoln. the devil is in the details. the difference between lincoln and the abolitionists lies less in the fundamental and i slavery positions they shared, then in the subtle ways and differences in the way they proposed to implement antislavery policies. placed onits lincoln his antislavery principles. i will show that in most

instances, lincoln took positions that were unambiguously antislavery, it also just shy of the radical abolitionist position. rather than saying lincoln was not an abolitionist, maybe we should say he was not quite an abolitionist. onnk of his stance abolitionists in the district of columbia. the position he took in 1837 remained the position he took he signed the washington dc abolitionist statute in 1862. that position was unambiguously antislavery. proslavery radicals argued that congress had no power to abolish slavery in d.c. because slaves were constitutionally protected property. lincoln rejected that. had the power to abolish slavery in the district. just as there was a broad spectrum of opinion with an

american politics, and within the republican party, there was a spectrum of opinion among those who agreed with lincoln that congress did have the power to abolish slavery in washington. that is, people who didn't take an explicitly proslavery position are all over the place. further to the rate will -- further to the right was henry clay. abolish has power to slavery in d.c., clay argued, but it should never do so because it would unleash inferior africans into white society, causing unspeakable havoc. this was not the position lincoln took. the lesse take hysterical position of the majority in the illinois legislature. those elected officials did admit in their resolutions that congress had the power to abolish slavery in d.c., but to do so, remember, they said would be a monstrous act of that eighth. against the position

which lincoln argued. he argued that congress should exercise its authority to abolish slavery in the district, whenever the people of the district petitioned congress to do so. clay's position. it was not the illinois legislature's position. it wasn't the abolitionist position, either. abolitionist said congress not only have the power to abolish slavery in washington dc, but it had a moral obligation to do so regardless of what the people within the district thought of the idea. washington dc was national property, and the constitution made the american people, through congress, the sovereign authority over the district. if congress chose to exercise that authority, by abolishing slavery, acting as representatives of the sovereign people of the united states, congress was free to do so and should do so, without reference to the will of the city's

occupants. when congress finally abolished slavery in the nation's capital, without consulting voters in the district, lincoln signed the bill into law. it wasn't quite the bill would hee wished he said, but supported abolition, so he was willing to sign it anyway. something similar with his first expressions of support for banning slavery in the territories. go back to the letter from 1845i quoted earlier from his friend, liberty party a man, a supporter of the abolitionist politics, trying to recruit antislavery people to the cause. as far as antislavery principles, liberty men could join hands without ever having to yield anything. in principle, antislavery whigs and live -- liberty party men were in agreements.

but abolitionists, disgusted by the way people had excluded slavery, wanted to form their own party. lincoln was unwilling to go that far. the same happened in 1848, when for the first time, tens of thousands of northern voters abandoned the two major parties, because of their refusal to the slavery issue at a national level, and went to the free soil party. .nce again, lincoln held back despite the fact that he agreed with free soil in principle as well as policy, he would not take that last step of party.ing the whig that party had to collapse beneath him before he stopped whig.'shimself a position on the fugitive slave act was anomalous. most politicians, interpreted the fugitive slave cause in jacksonian terms, were hostile to the notion that there was

such a thing as implied powers in the constitution, including current carloads, we would -- pa rlance, it did not contain an so mostent provision, antislavery politicians argued that enforcement was less to the states. lincoln came at a clause from hig whospective of a w believe that there were federal powers implied in the constitution. maybe a national university. to lincoln, the fact that the power -- the fact that the founders put a fugitive slave clause into the constitution clearly implied a federal power to enforce it. but that, in turn, imply that congress could establish the seizures were enforcing it. substantively, i think, lincoln's position was more radical in that it rested on the the federal

government could enforce civil rights within the states. not firmly established until the 14th amendment, but in the context of the 1850's, lincoln positioned himself more moderately. abolitionists called for a bright resistance -- outright resistance. radical republicans denounced slavery is unconstitutional. it was a bad law, he said, it should be revised, but it was not unconstitutional. on racialviews equality fit into this pattern. he positioned himself far to the left of the majority of voters, but to the right of the more -- the more thorough racial egalitarianism. blacks and whites were entitled to the same fundamental rights and the same privileges and immunities of citizenship. that much lincoln and abolitionists agreed on. for decades, the abolitionist

movement engaged in a two-pronged struggle against not only slavery in the south, but also against a raft of racial discredit a tory laws -- discriminatory laws in the northern states. that far, lincoln would not go. he made this clear by saying in , i am not now, nor i -- nor have i ever been in favor of, allowing blacks to vote or allowing blacks and whites to marry. it is true that he had never actually favor those things. he never said he was opposed, either. he never took a stand. that's the point. he never came out against racial discrimination away wayitionists -- the abolitionists did. lincoln doubted the majority of whites would allow blacks to live as equal citizens, certainly not in illinois where he was from. the only way blacks could --ieve the kind of similar

civil equality to which they were entitled was by voluntary -- voluntary emigration to a colony outside the u.s. it wasn't abolitionism. some historians claim lincoln hated abolitionists. there is no evidence to this. what evidence does suggest is, -- takes positions close to but somewhat less radical than, the abolitionists. the closer he came to agreeing with the abolitionists, the more determined he seemed to be to distance himself from them. his argument was the same. if you push antislavery principles too far, you will end up doing more harm and good. we saw that in the 1837 protest. having denounced slavery as an , he stood his ground on congress's right abolish slavery in d.c., he distance it

-- distanced himself from the movement by saying abolition hurt the cause. he said the same thing about the liberty party. he disagreed with the principles, but he said it did more harm than good to the cause. a decade later, he explicitly cautioned his fellow republicans at to pronounce, not to put defense he is in of the unconstitutionality of the republican platform. that would go too far. that would do more harm than good, he said. whether lincoln positioned himself in this way from sincere conviction or clever strategy, however, with lincoln it is impossible to tell the difference. we can say that lincoln understood two important things. first, he fully recognized his own positions were quite close to those of the abolitionists.

he once joked the difference between him and radical republican senator charles sumner was six weeks. he was behind the radicals, but not far behind. second, lincoln viewed radical complaints about his being too conservative as useful to the theylavery cause, because made lincoln's position seem more moderate. more respectable. this was not all that different from garrison's view of his role in the abolitionist movement. garrison indicated that by taking the extreme stance he did, burning the constitution in public and the like, he was making life easier for less militant abolitionists. abolitionist militancy and radicalism made it easier for lincoln to position himself as a moderate in the broader antislavery movement. there is little doubt that lincoln was sensitive to that positioning. the more radical lincoln's politics became over the course of the 1850's, the more stridently he insisted that he

was a conservative. lincoln and the abolitionists new what they were up to. in 1862, lincoln met with radical abolitionists, and told tom that if it was useful the cause of emancipation to go out and denounce lincoln as a hopeless reactionary, they should by all means go and do so. radical criticism would provide cover for lincoln's own slightly less radical antislavery agenda. telephone conversations for which we have tapes, lyndon johnson told martin luther king to do almost precisely the same thing. if it helps you to go out into the street and put pressure on me to support a civil rights act, lbj said, by all means go into the streets. say what you need to say about me. it can only make my job easier. us with many

legacies, but here is the one that most captures my imagination. he understood the importance of the abolitionist movement. every antislavery position lincoln took, every antislavery principle he enunciated, he got from the abolitionists. his agenda was their agenda. lincoln thought of radicals as the indispensable base of the republican party. but in the very act of establishing the radical position on slavery, they made it easier for lincoln to position his own antislavery positions as the safer, more moderate position. it is worth remembering this because we live in a cynical age. we don't trust politicians to do what needs to be done. we don't even trust politics as a means of getting things done. in a situation like this, it is tempting to look back at lincoln's age and ask nostalgic, as if there was a time when giants roamed the earth and the -- and liberty was more

important in lobbying, when principles mattered more than partisans. mistake. we misunderstand lincoln's legacy if we are -- if we ignore the fact that he was, to the very fiber of his being, a partisan politician. a back room wheeler and dealer. a glad andrew could make everyone who left his office feel satisfied that they were in complete agreement. was an element of calculation in every friendship he formed and every political position he took. i say this not to denigrate lincoln, but to explain his legacy. it is not enough to think good thoughts and say the right things. lincoln had plenty of good thoughts. he usually said the right things. indeed, they were some of the most radical thoughts of his day. he often said them better than most people. as a politician, there is a truly -- lincoln also knew how

to express his thoughts in ways that made it easier for hundreds of thousands of americans to vote their antislavery principles and stick with them through four painful years. lincoln understood that necessary, butre not sufficient to destroy slavery. a civilocracy, whether rights movement or abolitionist movement succeeds only by translating its demands into policies. .ovements don't enact laws politicians do that. democracy works best, it fulfills its most solemn promises on those rare occasions when reformers and politicians come together and achieve great things. legacy.lies lincoln's he was no radical. he presided over the most radical social revolution in american history. he was not an evolutionist, and he never claimed to be.

but abraham lincoln did as much anynyone can ever did -- one man ever did to make abolition safe for democracy. thank you. [applause] i can take questions, if you have any. if you are still awake. it is kind of warm in here. no? sure. >> steven spielberg got it right? isn't that basically what he , the way hee movie got the 13th amendment through congress was -- dr. oakes: that part, he got right. lincoln was a politician. he doesn't pay off evil for their votes, the way they do in wasmovie, but as i

explaining to john in the car, on the way over, that he is thaddeus stevens knew how to get laws passed. nobody knew better how to get the true north as stevens. a smart guy. that is what we have to understand. these were brilliant politicians. you need those types of people. you have to have politicians that can get things done if you want a democracy to work. yes? a great analysis. i want to ask you, could you say bit more about how lincoln's views, with the politicking, may duringolved over time his presidency? the way you presented it was kind of like, he sort of was on board with abolitionism by the time he became president, then he sort

of worked carefully. changed some of his ideas, or he grew more comfortable with certain things. talk a little bit about organic changes. he grows in office. was, his positions in 1860 or more radical than they were in an 18 foot -- 1854. in 1854 he comes back into .olitics with an anti-slavery by the secession crisis, that is not an acceptable position. now, he wants a ban on slavery in the territories. that is his bottom line. he never said anything about -- theship, the when he way he was talking, until after. there were hints of it here and

there. but after dred scott, he starts saying things about black citizenship. the movement is there before the war. all through the war, it is not just lincoln, they are realizing things, they are learning from events, coming to realize that the agenda that they had for all these years, the peacetime agenda, was not enough. they shift to military emancipation, they shift from emancipation to a universal military emancipation, then starting in 1863, we see lincoln use clubary emancipation as a on the states to get them to abolish slavery. he gets five states to abolish slavery. without those five states, abolishing slavery, the ratio of free states to slave states in january 1865, when the amendment

goes to the states, would have made it impossible for that amendment to get through. nobody, nobody could have imagined that. the civil war. nobody was talking about a 13th amendment. he is moving with events, learning with events. people often move the wrong way. johnson moved with events. the strength of the war, the losses and everything, that was a particularly large factor? if there had been no civil war, with things have been different in the way he maneuvered by way of the abolitionists? i get asked that question a lot about whether the cordon of freedom would have at peacetime.

it was a peacetime policy, right? over the years, i have had different answers. i can explain why it wouldn't work, i -- i can explain why it would. but really, i tend to say now, nothing worked without a war. any interpretation you have of -- slavery got it abolished that abolished, when it failed if there was no war. it is a military necessity. slaves can't free themselves without a war. hand, historians of slavery will tell you that wars are historically the greatest single source of mass enslavement. wars don't automatically lead to abolition. they usually lead in the opposite direction. usually, after war, you enslave the people. so, there is nothing automatic in the war. nothing that will make lincoln move in a more radical

antislavery direction unless he is already primed to move in that direction anyway. he responds to the war in a way that is consistent with the principles and policies he has been advocating for a long time. and moving in the same increasingly radical direction. it's not just him. his party is moving in that way. for all i think we have not understood about the pre-civil ,ar or -- origins of abolition we still have to come to terms with the fact that the war changed everything. it made things imaginable that were unimaginable. lincoln'snk mary family being a slaveholding family may have influenced lincoln's earlier reluctance? dr. oakes: what reluctance are you talking about?

>> she was from kentucky. i think several of her siblings were actually on the confederate military. i was wondering if, in the early times, lincoln may have held back on abolitionists. dr. oakes: but he didn't. he takes his antislavery position publicly, early. 1837. he is young. how old was he? that was his second term in the legislature? first or second term. he is pretty young. when he starts making public antislavery statements. , i havelater says always been antislavery, i can't member a time when i was. we have to take that at face value. his parents went to an antislavery church.

i don't think mary's family, she wasn't a slave holder. her family was. it was a divided family. i don't think that had much influence. yes? >> the comment you made, also the comments you made about the agenda of the abolitionists and lincoln subscribing or a scribing to that. it begs the question, in comparison to lyndon johnson, who took a situation and tried to do the best he could with it, but he wasn't really dedicated to that cause when he came into office, it seems lincoln had a cause. something about slavery. the presidency gave him the opportunity to do it. dr. oakes: true. to makeal reluctance historical parallels, everything is different.

you are right. he gets elected as an antislavery president. lyndon johnson takes office as the byproduct of an assassination. he had much more of a role in passing the 1957 civil rights act than people previously understood, based on certain volumes on this topic. what that is correct, he had never run for office as a civil rights advocate the way lincoln had made antislavery his identity as a politician from 1854 on. you had a question? i want to thank you for the outstanding presentation. it was excellent. i want to know about the relationship with regular -- with frederick douglass and how, how bad it evolved. -- how that evolved. dr. oakes: there is a book.

>> i will buy it. dr. oakes: my best book. what i argue in the book is, frederick douglass, when he escapes from slavery, he enters the antislavery movement through the garrison only in portal. he goes to a part of the united states were garrison is strong. by the time he is there, 's position has become extremely critical of the constitution as a hopelessly ro slavery document. he is therefore argued people .hould not vote he enters the abolitionist movement with a kind of there istics, hostile, nothing possible under this constitution. there is, it is not clear how he thinks slavery will get abolished. it is not clear how garrison thinks it will get them -- get

abolished. ancoln starts his life as whig politician. not an antislavery politician. what happens to these two guys, particularly during the 1840's and 50's, you see lincoln becoming, lincoln's politics become more antislavery and garrison'sandons version of the constitution, except the possibility of a real constitution of politics, antislavery politics, under the present constitution, moves to new york, where he is influenced by a different kind of abolitionist. by 1860, he has come to accept that antislavery politics is possible. lincoln has come from, has become an antislavery politician. they are converging. but douglass is skeptical of lincoln.

he comes from, he moved from the position that the constitution is hopelessly proslavery to , asher extreme, in which part of the small group of abolitionists, believe that the constitution was an antislavery document and you could in fact, card -- congress could abolish slavery by legislation. hardly anybody believe that. he criticizes lincoln's more moderate position. positionainstream abolitionists take. he comes into the work skeptical of lincoln. war, he course of the comes to appreciate lincoln. .e meets lincoln three times in each of those meetings, he comes away impressed by the sincerity. after the second meeting in 1864, when lincoln says, is desperate to get slavery abolished and asks douglass for

advice, douglass realizes the sincerity and depth of lincoln's commitment, and voluntarily decides, i am going to go see the second inaugural, which is a sacred moment. they admired think and liked one another very much. for the rest of his life, douglass lived a long and productive life. he never gave up. he always used lincoln in his later speeches, as a sort of bang at congress for not continuing the project. what would lincoln do? he wouldn't let this stuff in the south go on. of two ofeat story, the people i most admire. douglass coming to understand why lincoln took positions that were just shy of the radical

position, and why that is what had to be done in a democracy. my analysis means nothing. this is his analysis. he says, measured by pure abolitionist standards, he was slow, cold, tardy. reluctant. measure him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, and he was radical, committed, and unflappable. i think that's right. i think douglass got it right. >> how did you become interested in lincoln? where are you from? where were you raised? war? only the civil or history in general? and students. how do they take your class? dr. oakes: they agree with me.

[laughter] so compelling. i am from new york, i am from the bronx. undergraduate, i read a book by a guy named theeth stamp called peculiar institution. i was blown away. i read the book he wrote called "the era of reconstruction." i was blown away. i went to berkeley and studied with kenneth stamp. that is the simple answer. i was inspired by his work. i have been interested ever since. my students? -- i don't think, i

actually think, in this day and age, notwithstanding all of this nonsense about the confederate flag of all of that, i think white southerners have come a very long way. , thatk those confederate confederate stuff is increasingly marginal, even among southerners. i live in an ivory tower. i see people who are educated. white southerners around me are very responsive to the kind of stuff that i am talking about. i think one of the things i am doing, for example, is, if i am threat lincoln and the republicans posed to slavery in 1860 was a real one, it wasn't radical abolitionism in the sense that we are going to march into the south and free slaves and pass a law. it was, we are going to build a cordon of read them.

we will make slavery died. state-by-state. they knew that. what i am doing is saying that secession might in the end have turned out to be a spectacular ascalculation, but it was not historical overreaction to a nonexistent threat. when i say that, i sign -- i think white southern a sort -- historians appreciate that. i am saying, yes, they understood what the threat was. they made a calculation that slavery is safer if we needed to be. that turned out to be wrong. it wasn't hysterical. it wasn't a misjudgment. i find, a lot of my fellow historians, especially white southerners, appreciate that. i am not turning the south into a bunch of rabid nut cases. they are not making the civil war and accident like crazy

politicians, that sort of thing. >> adding to what you discuss, would it be fair to say that, in the south, in the election of 1860, lincoln is viewed as definitely an abolitionist, and the radical republicans are saying, well, he is ok, but he's the best we got? i think radical republicans are all over the place about him. some of the most radical of the radicals, lovejoy. nobody is more radical than lovejoy. he loved lincoln. he defended lincoln all the time. sumner was a friend of lincoln. him.fended looking at congressional records, we need to get over the mythology that they hated one another. did nancy pelosi hate obama? or is it the frustrations of a group of people who are basically on the same side? right?

you have to be careful when you read that kind of rhetoric. they are on the same side, and they know they are on the same side. lincoln does not veto any of their bills, any of their antislavery bills. he doesn't. they have an agenda, and they all know what the agenda is. that he us stevens is a good -- addeus stevens is practical but getting things done. something i discovered while writing my book, radicals pushed for what they could get, and when they couldn't get it, they compromised a little and took the vote. samervatives did the thing. they wanted gradual abolition, they couldn't get it, they accepted it. compensation.nt they wouldn't get a bill without compensation, so they swallowed it. so you got a unanimous vote in favor of d.c. emancipation. with radicals and conservatives

compromising, because they saw the greater good. they weren't willing to sacrifice the good on the altar of perfection. >> [indiscernible] dr. oakes: they saw lincoln as an abolitionist. that is, the agenda, if you subtract all of the militant rhetoric and all the talk about mediatism,is him -- im he is there. he is taking the same positions on most of the fundamental issues. he had to know. when he offered those compromise proposals during the secession crisis, ok. we will enforce the fugitive slave law, but you have to give us a national personal liberty law. when they are conversation, we have to secede because the northern states are passing these laws, howell they respond

to again saying, let's have a national personal liberty law? they are not stupid. they may have been wrong, but they were not stupid. yes? >> you think that we have mythologized lincoln to the point which he cannot be useful in counteracting the cynicism of today about politics? you are doing a magnificent job of helping with that, but i wonder about that. dr. oakes: yes, we mythologized lincoln. we also demonize him. we have lincoln the tyrant, lincoln the incorrigible racist, , theln the whatever emancipation proclamation, freed the slaves with a stroke of a pen, which is a mythological statement. or didn't free a single state -- a single slave, but that is a ludicrous statement. it is hard to find middle

ground. i said in the enter production to -- in the introduction to one of my books, there is too much hyperbole and the way that we talk about lincoln. people use lincoln for anything they want to use him for. it is hard to say. are we done? we are done. thank you. good questions. [laughter] >> you are watching "american all weekend every weekend. like us on facebook. [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2014] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] >> monday, how the creative process takes work. ask why did the right brothers fly first? what was their