The Radical and the Republican by James Oakes

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The Radical and the Republican
Introduction
James Oakes’ book, “The Radical and The Republican” talks about slavery, discrimination against races, the Civil War, the politics that existed in the period of the mid-1800s and also the abolition of trade. The main events and themes of this book revolve around to men, Fredrick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. Fredrick Douglass is portrayed as the Radical while Abraham Lincoln represents the Republican. The Radical represents a perfect mold of the American popular history over the tussle between the Northern and the Southern parts concerning slave trade. Oakes tries to reveal the tribulations and the trials that the two men faced during the hard times of slavery in the United States of America. It is an engaging story of two heroes who emerge victorious amidst adversity and holding different perspectives.
Oakes grounds the book in a more professional historical command of the vast literature on Slave abolition, Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. Oakes tries to show ways in which both Fredrick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln share a given proportion of parallel links in their lives and ideas. Oakes presents the case of the ideologically opposite men converging at a certain critical point with the United States history, the event of the abolition of the slave trade. Oakes therefore show that the two men, Douglass and Lincoln, given their respective social and political positions complement each o…