by Fred Kaplan
The acclaimed biographer, with a thought-provoking
exploration of how Abraham Lincoln’s and John Quincy Adams’ experiences with
slavery and race shaped their differing viewpoints, provides both perceptive
insights into these two great presidents and a revealing perspective on race
relations in modern America.
Lincoln, who in afterlife became mythologized as the Great
Emancipator, was 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 anti-slavery 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
had reluctantly taken 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. John Quincy Adams, forty years earlier, was
convinced that only a civil war would end slavery and preserve the Union. An
antislavery activist, he had concluded that a multiracial America was
inevitable.
Lincoln and the Abolitionists, a frank look at
Lincoln, "warts and all," 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. In a far-reaching historical
narrative, Fred Kaplan offers a nuanced appreciation of both these great men
and the events that have characterized race relations in America for more than
a century—a legacy that continues to haunt us all.
The book has a colorful supporting cast from the relatively
obscure Dorcas Allen, Moses Parsons, Violet Parsons, Theophilus Parsons, Phoebe
Adams, John King, Charles Fenton Mercer, Phillip Doddridge, David Walker, Usher
F. Linder, and H. Ford Douglas to Elijah Lovejoy, Francis Scott Key, William
Channing, Wendell Phillips, and Rufus King. The cast includes Hannibal Hamlin,
Lincoln’s first vice president, and James Buchanan and Andrew Johnson, the two
presidents on either side of Lincoln. And it includes Abigail Adams, John
Adams, Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and Frederick Douglass, who hold honored
places in the American historical memory.
The subject of this book is slavery and racism, the paradox
of Lincoln, our greatest president, as an antislavery moralist who believed in
an exclusively white America; and Adams, our most brilliant statesman, as an
antislavery activist who had no doubt that the United States would become a
multiracial nation. It is as much about the present as the past.
About the Author
Fred Kaplan is
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English at Queens College and the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. He is the author of Lincoln: The
Biography of a Writer, which was named a Best Book of the Year by the New
York Times and Washington Post, among other publications. His
biography of Thomas Carlyle was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle
Award and the Pulitzer Prize. He lives in Maine.
ISBN 978-0062440006, Harper, © 2017, Hardcover, 416 pages,
Photographs & Illustrations, End Notes & Index. $28.99. To
purchase a copy of this book click HERE.
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