Mr. Sullivan Name

Mr. Sullivan Name:

One man was a politician, the other a reformer. How they pursued their goals, interacted with, and learned from one another is the basis of this book. Learn more as you read The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (2007) by James Oakes.

1. This book opens in 1856. At that time, what did Lincoln assert that Congress had always exercised its power to do? Why did Lincoln believe that Congress should continue to exercise this power?

2. “Frederick Douglass. It was enough for the Register to print the name with no further identification. Everyone knew who he was…” Who was he?

3. During the 1858 Illinois race for a U.S. Senate seat, “for an accomplished race-baiter like Stephen Douglas, there was no more effective weapon” than what?

Senator Stephen A. Douglas

4. “The senator did have a point. What difference was there, he wondered, between a politician whose platform was based on his hatred of slavery and a radical reformer who devoted himself to slavery’s abolition? One hundred and fifty years later it takes some work to grasp the distinction between antislavery politics and radical reform.” Did Lincoln understand this distinction? Did Frederick Douglass?

5. Oakes writes, “Here, then, is the story I want to tell…” What is this story? Moreover, what did “Lincoln and Douglass, seen together, reveal”?

6. In 1858, what speech had Lincoln given “at the outset of his campaign for the Senate?” Did Frederick Douglass approve of what Lincoln had said?

7. In what year did Douglass escape to freedom?

8. Douglass “had entered the movement through the Garrisonian portal, and it shaped the way Douglass initially framed his own antislavery message. The Garrisonian argument against slavery was simple but devastating…” What was this message? Rejecting the use of force, what did the Garrisonians advocate as a tactic to end slavery?

William Lloyd Garrison

9. Although Garrison was a pacifist, Douglass may not have been a faithful believer in non-violence. For example, in his 1845 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, what incident did he describe as “a turning point in his life…the moment when he had in his own mind ceased to be a slave”?

10. Having fled to Great Britain, Douglass invoked “the legacy of the American Revolution. He even defended his criticism of the United States” as being what?

11. In 1846, to what was the Free Soil Party dedicated? Did Douglass endorse this party’s ideas?

12. Who “stepped in to replace William Lloyd Garrison as Douglass’s most significant mentor”? Did this man believe that it was legitimate “to impose a proslavery meaning on clauses that did not explicitly mention slavery”?

13. “Having embraced political activism, Douglass faced a question familiar to all radical reformers.” What was it?

14. “At first Douglass objected vehemently to the Republican Party.” Why?

15. As for Douglass’s decision to support the Republican’s 1856 presidential candidate (who believed that the Constitution protected slavery where it already existed), “there’s a case to be made for holding to your principles; that’s what reformers are supposed to do. But there’s an equally strong case” for what? Why?

16. After returning from Europe, Douglass became a “universal reformer.” What were some of his causes?

17. “[Douglass] was incensed by the claim coming from various quarters, two in particular, that African Americans did not belong in the United States.” What were these two particular groups?

18. “When Douglass abandoned the Garrisonians and embraced antislavery politics, the theme of his speeches and writings began to change. Instead of denouncing the degradation of an entire nation corrupted by slavery,” what did Douglass do? What could he do “from that position”? “He could turn his criticism against the North for its failure” to do what?

19. “By the late 1850s most of what Douglass had to say about slavery was framed around the theme of the titanic struggle between” which two things?

20. On what aspect of Lincoln were Caleb Carmamn, Orlando Ficklin, and Samuel Parks consistent?

21. For Lincoln, what was “a moral conviction as much as a principle of political economy”?

22. “Because Polk was a slaveholder and an ardent foe of abolitionism,” what was it that “many northerners suspected” about the Mexican War?

23. As of 1852, “Lincoln had always criticized abolitionists for their sanctimonious denunciations of the South,” but what had he never doubted? However, “what shocked Lincoln now”?

24. What prompted “Lincoln’s conversion to antislavery politics”?

25. “In the first years after 1854 Lincoln worked to keep the party’s antislavery message clear and simple…” What was this message?

26. Although Lincoln “believed that slavery was brutal”…. he was “much more inclined to denounce slavery” for what reason?

27. The author states, “This is what Lincoln preferred to say about slavery….” What were these four elements to Lincoln’s view on slavery?

28. “As disturbing as the three-fifths and fugitive slave clauses were, Lincoln believed they were put into the Constitution” for what reason? However, Lincoln also believed that “in principle most of the Founders” held what belief regarding slavery?

29. In Lincoln’s opinion, “the Constitution recognized and protected slavery where it had been unavoidably necessary, but it was written by men who hated slavery, hemmed it in where they could, and hoped it would eventually die.” Thus, what “crucial distinction” did Lincoln make?

30. “The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 changed everything, Lincoln said, precisely because it was designed” to do what?

31. “It would be hard to name anything in Lincoln’s political life that made him angrier” than what U.S. Supreme Court case?

32. “Unlike John C. Calhoun and other proslavery extremists, Stephen Douglas did not reject the principle of fundamental human equality; on the contrary, he defiantly asserted his devotion” to what document? “But he and a growing legion of followers were now arguing that the principle did not apply to blacks…” Why not?

33. By the late 1850s, “[Lincoln] was beginning to suspect that slavery was doomed, not because of northern hostility but because” of what?

34. According to Russell Cornwell, who did Lincoln quote in his 1860 Cooper Union speech? What was the quote? “There was just one problem.” What was it? J

35. “As the presidential election of 1860 got under way, Frederick Douglass found himself in an uncomfortably familiar position.” What were his two choices?

36. As the presidential election neared, “Douglass made a startling announcement.” What was it? This being the case, would Douglass support Lincoln?

37. “Lincoln could be gregarious in private, but as a public figure he was a man of Promethean reserve.” In classical mythology, who is Prometheus? What does it mean to be Promethean? [Look them up! J]

38. “Lincoln was not the man to satisfy Douglass’s thirst for romantic revolution, at least not immediately. But in 1859 there was someone else who did.” Who was it?

39. Was Douglass “tempted to join [Brown’s] ‘desperate’ rebellion itself”? Why?

40. “Lincoln had said that the conflict over slavery was part of the eternal struggle between right and wrong; for Douglass, as for John Brown, it was also a struggle” between whom?

41. “Though Brown ‘agreed with us in thinking slavery is wrong,’ Lincoln explained, there was no excuse for Brown’s ‘violence, bloodshed, and treason.’ Then Lincoln craftily turned the argument back against the Democrats. The same went for the southern states, he said…” What warning did Lincoln give to the states?

42. “Frederick Douglass liked to invoke ‘a higher law,’ but for Lincoln there was nothing higher” than what, “without which there could be no real freedom”?

43. “By the late 1850s much of the difference between Douglass’s radicalism and Lincoln’s conservatism had come down to one critical question…” What was this question? How did the two men answer the question differently?

44. “All the political pressures operating on Abraham Lincoln compelled him to separate” what two things? “Everything in Frederick Douglass’s experience convinced him” of what?

45. The author notes that “as his analysis of the problems of slavery and racism developed, Douglass, like most African American activists of his day, did assume that the mutual interests and responsibilities of black men and women united them into something like a nation. Starting from this assumption, Douglass developed a new argument for fusing the struggles against southern slavery and northern racism.” What did he call this new argument?

46. Prior of 1854, “Lincoln said even less about blacks than he did about slavery.” What was “simply never an issue for him, one way or the other, so racial demagoguery was never part of his political identity”?

47. “Without giving the matter any real thought Lincoln quietly accepted” what “prevailing assumption among whites”?

48. Lincoln debated Stephen Douglas in Charleston, Illinois in September 1858. Lincoln spoke extensively on slavery and the rights of free blacks. The author of the book you are reading summarizes Lincoln’s views, stating, “It came down to this…” What is the author’s summary of Lincoln’s views?

49. “Lincoln’s caginess about racial equality was prompted by something else. For him the entire issue was a distraction.” A distraction from what? What was Lincoln’s strategy to get “questions of race moved off the table”?

50. “By massaging the racial prejudices of northern voters Lincoln allowed them—or enough of them,” to do what?

51. “For Douglass there was never, ever an acceptable excuse for racial discrimination. But Lincoln was a politician.” How did this make Lincoln’s handling of this issue different from Douglass’s? [This is a major point of this book.]

52. “Back in February 1860 Lincoln had made a prediction at Cooper Union that turned out to be surprisingly accurate…” What was this prediction?

53. “As late as 1864 Douglass lent his support to a quixotic attempt to block Lincoln’s nomination, claiming that until a ‘sound Anti-Slavery man’ was elected as President, ‘we shall be in danger of a slaveholding compromise.’” What does it mean to describe something as being quixotic? [Look it up! J]

54. “For all his fears of compromise Frederick Douglass always maintained that because the Civil War was caused by slavery, it could only conclude” in what way?

55. “As Lincoln rose to take his oath of office on March 4, 1861, he had two points to make…” What were they?

56. “Douglass was infuriated by the inaugural address, the peroration in particular.” In this context, what is a peroration? [Look it up! J]

57. How did Union general Benjamin Butler reply to a Confederate major who “showed up at Butler’s headquarters demanding to know if the Union general intended to abide by his ‘constitutional obligations to deliver up fugitives under the fugitive slave act’?”

58. What was “the reason General Butler sent Colonel Mallory a receipt for his three fugitives”?

59. To lose which border state “would be a disaster—probably a fatal disaster—for the Union cause”?

60. “By the end of 1861 slavery had been dealt a mortal wound, just as Lincoln said, just as he had predicted. But Lincoln obscured every one of his moves” in what ways? “He was doing what he could to make it look as if the wound to slavery” were what?

61. “Ever since the importation of slaves had been banned in 1808 the U.S. had, in Frederick Douglass’s words,” done what? What did the government stop doing “shortly after Lincoln took office”?

62. From which state in the United States was slave trader Nathaniel P. Gordon? What became of him?

63. “In the spring of 1861 bloodthirsty words were hemorrhaging from all quarters, above and below the Mason-Dixon line.” What was the Mason-Dixon line? [Look it up! J] What does the author mean when he writes, “But Douglass had an agenda that most northerners did not”?

64. What was Douglass’s opinion of “Lincoln’s delicate maneuvering to keep the border states in the Union”?

65. “For Douglass necessity would ultimately force Lincoln to adopt an emancipation policy. For Lincoln, what “would make emancipation legitimate to northerners who would accept it under no other circumstances”?

66. “Lincoln and Douglass could have agreed down to the last jot and tittle—on racial equality, on the Constitution, on colonization—and still, Lincoln would have been restrained…in ways that Douglass was not.” How was Lincoln restrained?

67. “By late afternoon [January 1, 1863] the telegraph wires were buzzing…” What was the major news?

68. “As if to emphasize its military rationale, Lincoln withheld publication of the proclamation” until when?

69. “Back in December [1861] Lincoln had taken it upon himself to declare confiscated slaves liberated. Now he was going much further…” How?

70. “At the suggestion of the secretary of state, Lincoln withheld the publication of the Emancipation Proclamation” until what time?

71. “On August 14 [1862] the Interior Department’s commissioner of emigration, the Reverend James Mitchell, escorted a delegation of five African Americans, most of them local preachers, to the White House…” Why was Lincoln meeting with this delegation? What “outrageous” assertion did Lincoln make?

72. “Lincoln was scheming, Douglass was fuming, and all the while” who was “making plans”? At which battle was it that “the South’s attempt to invade the North was turned back, and the Union had a clear military victory on its hands”?

73. What did Lincoln do five days after the battle referred to in the previous question?

74. “Almost immediately after the firing on Fort Sumter blacks across the North began offering themselves as soldiers in state militias and the Union army…” What became of their attempts to enlist?

75. “Throughout the first half of 1863 Douglass traveled the North, telling black audiences that it was their moral obligation” to do what?

76. “With northern morale buoyed by the Union’s greatest victories, with black soldiers having proved themselves in battle even as antiwar violence peaked, Frederick Douglass made his first trip to Washington, D.C.” What were these two notable victories, both occurring in July 1863?