38 pages • 1 hour read
James OakesThe Radical and the Republican
James OakesNonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2007A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 4 Summary: “The Thunderbolt Will Keep”
Chapter 4 plunges the reader directly into the election of Lincoln in late 1860 and the fallout cause by a Republican president gaining power. Although Oakes tries to show that Lincoln’s original intent was to do all that he could to preserve the Union, “[h]e repeated once again that he had neither the intention nor the inclination to interfere with slavery in the South” (139) during his inaugural address. Oakes also shows how Lincoln was not one to be afraid of the potential conflict to come. Still, as masterful as ever he managed to position himself such that, should conflict come to pass, it would be clear to all that it was brought upon by an intransigent South:
In your [Southern] hands, my dissatisfied fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict, without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it’ (141).
Oakes goes on to argue that Lincoln saw slavery as something on its deathbed, but that the secession of the Southern states would be something that would hasten its demise. However, what Lincoln struggled with the most was the way in which slavery could be ended “legally” (144).
Moreover, the necessities of war, primarily keeping the border states, which had a substantial number of slaves, in the Union was paramount for Lincoln. For should they lose the border states, it “would be a disaster—probably a fatal disaster—for the Union cause” (151). Because of this, Lincoln sought gradual and less radical ways of bringing about the end of slavery in those states and territories still loyal to the Union so as not to upset their populations. His ideas included leaving the issue up to local governments or having Congress pay slaveowners for their slaves, who they would then be legally able to set free. Lincoln also flirted with the idea of colonization, once espoused by his political role-model Henry Clay, but soon realized the implausibility of such a plan.
To Douglass, Lincoln’s slow movement towards the abolition of slavery and his plans to appease slaveowners was a grand betrayal, for he believed that “no good shall come to the Negro from the war” (164) unless they were protected by being given the same rights as their fellow man. Once again, however, “Douglass’s criticism of Lincoln had more to do with the way they positioned themselves than with the positions they took” (159).
Chapter 4 Analysis
Having first set up the characters of Lincoln and Douglass, as well as given background to the events leading up to the American Civil War, Chapter 4 tries to dig beneath the surface to show the reasoning behind how Lincoln prosecuted the war against the South, and, in particular, how he dealt with the issue of slavery. While Lincoln might not have wanted to admit it, at least publicly, slavery was the central issue of the war, as two competing economic and social systems were vying for control of the American continent. To simply view that re-establishing the Union as being the crux of the war would have been not only myopic, it would have been delusional. Thus, plans were needed to deal with the eventual fallout that would occur from the war’s inevitably ending the institution of slavery in America.
However, what is often forgotten is that many slave states stayed in the Union. Thus, a unilateral decree or similar action that risked alienated pro-Northern slaveholders could easily send them into the Southern camp, especially since the South had already claimed grounds for secession on the fact that federal government, i.e. Northern government, had overstepped its bounds and wielded its power too widely. To lose the border states would seriously jeopardize the North’s ability to prosecute the war: it would extend their Western frontline; surround Washington, D.C., in Confederate territory; and add thousands upon thousands of men to the Army of Northern Virginia. Thus, Lincoln’s initial approach to slavery would have seemed uninteresting to someone like Douglass, who viewed the advent of the war to be the prime time for action.
Furthermore came the question of what was to be done with the newly freed slaves. While to present-day readers it is clear that they should be given full rights of American citizens and allowed to live within the United States as free men, this was far from the case in the mid-19th century. It also strikes to the heart of how, for this time, being liberal and progressive was a far cry from the modern ideas. For many, especially for the earliest of abolitionists, it was obvious that the slaves should be freed, but just as obvious that they should not stay in America, for to do so would continue the rift that slavery had created.
Believing neither that blacks and whites could not coexist together, nor that they should, many, including abolitionists, felt the best way to deal with slavery was to end it and then allow for the slaves to settle elsewhere, in either Africa, Haiti, or Latin America. The belief was that there, they could form their own states with their own people and live without either the influence of white men or make the life and political system of the white man more difficult. As such, while slavery was considered evil, slaves and black men were considered problematic, for it was their situation—albeit one of the white man’s making—that was causing so much pain and suffering on the part of the white United States.
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