Lincoln and the Abolitionists: John Quincy Adams, Slavery, and the Civil War

by Fred Kaplan

Overview

"Anyone who wants to understand the United States' racial divisions will learn a lot from reading Kaplan's richly researched account of one of the worst periods in American history and its chilling effects today in our cities, legislative bodies, schools, and houses of worship." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

The acclaimed biographer Fred Kaplan returns with a controversial exploration of how Abraham Lincoln’s and John Quincy Adams’ experiences with slavery and race shaped their differing viewpoints, providing perceptive insights into these two great presidents and a revealing perspective on race relations in modern America

Though the Emancipation Proclamation, limited as it was, ultimately defined his presidency, Lincoln was a man 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 antislavery 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 reluctantly took 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.

Years earlier, John Quincy Adams had become convinced that slavery would eventually destroy the Union. Only through civil war, sparked by a slave insurrection or secession, would slavery end and the Union be preserved. Deeply sympathetic to abolitionists and abolitionism, Adams believed that a multiracial America was inevitable. Lincoln and the Abolitionists, a frank look at Lincoln, “warts and all,” including his limitations as a wartime leader, 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.

Its supporting cast of characters is colorful, from the obscure to the famous: Dorcas Allen, Moses Parsons, Usher F. Linder, Elijah Lovejoy, William Channing, Wendell Phillips, Rufus King, Hannibal Hamlin, Andrew Johnson, Abigail Adams, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and Frederick Douglass, among scores of significant others. In a far-reaching historical narrative, Kaplan offers a nuanced appreciation of the great men—Lincoln as an antislavery moralist who believed in an exclusively white America, and Adams as an antislavery activist who had no doubt that the United States would become a multiracial nation—and the events that have characterized race relations in America for more than a century, a legacy that continues to haunt us all.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062440020
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	06/12/2018
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	432
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

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.

Table of Contents

Preface xi

1 A Continual Torment 1

2 The First American Martyr 27

3 A Difficult Year 46

4 A Field of Blood 76

5 The Distant Goal 116

6 The African Mirage 153

7 The Constitutional Rag 199

8 The Ameliorative President 240

9 Soft Inducement 275

10 The Ultimate Gradualists 306

Acknowledgments 337

Notes 341

Index 367

Editorial Reviews

"Anyone who wants to understand the United States' racial divisions will learn a lot from reading Kaplan's richly researched account of one of the worst periods in American history and its chilling effects today in our cities, legislative bodies, schools, and houses of worship." — St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“In this elegantly written and thoroughly researched book … Kaplan presents a more complex Lincoln who 'presided over the creation of a new reality that neither he nor anyone could fully embrace, or embrace in a way that would eliminate racial conflict.'” — Publishers Weekly

“A fresh look at John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, abolitionism, and other related American history…In this insightful, often disturbing dual biography, he makes a convincing case that Adams, working decades before Lincoln, was the real hero…. eye-opening.” — Kirkus (starred review)

From the Publisher

"Anyone who wants to understand the United States' racial divisions will learn a lot from reading Kaplan's richly researched account of one of the worst periods in American history and its chilling effects today in our cities, legislative bodies, schools, and houses of worship."

St. Louis Post-Dispatch

04/24/2017
In this elegantly written and thoroughly researched book, Kaplan (John Quincy Adams: American Visionary), professor emeritus of English at Queens College, relates how two presidents, Abraham Lincoln and John Quincy Adams, thought about and dealt with slavery and race. Lincoln believed that African-Americans should emigrate to Africa or another homeland. Adams, meanwhile, was an ardent abolitionist who foresaw the eventual rise of a multicultural America. Kaplan contrasts their views and discusses the people and events that shaped their intellectual, political, and moral development. Among these figures is Dorcas Allen, an enslaved woman who killed her two children and whose trial ignited Adams’s passion against the peculiar institution, which reached its apotheosis in the famous Amistad trial of 1841. The murder of the impassioned antislavery preacher Elijah Lovejoy in 1837 in Alton, Ill., was influential in forming Lincoln’s opinions about African-Americans, slavery, and the law. The procolonization ideas of Sen. Henry Clay, Thomas Jefferson’s dour views on black intellectual capacity, and Frederick Douglass’s opposition to colonization also come under consideration. Kaplan presents a more complex Lincoln who “presided over the creation of a new reality that neither he nor anyone could fully embrace, or embrace in a way that would eliminate racial conflict.” Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Inc. (June)

Publishers Weekly

06/01/2017
Kaplan (English, Queens Coll.; Graduate Ctr., CUNY; Lincoln: The Biography of a Writer) compares how Presidents John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) and Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) viewed race, slavery, party politics, and the sanctity of the Union. He casts Adams as a true abolitionist and Lincoln as a reluctant one. After long digressions into the histories of the Adams and Lincoln families, and lengthy context on Whig interests both men shared, Kaplan suggests Adams developed a steely resolve in supporting abolition, a resolve Lincoln lacked. He also maintains that Adams could imagine a multicultural society after emancipation while Lincoln balked at such, distrusting abolitionists for their excesses and arguing for the colonization of African Americans as an end to slavery. Kaplan speculates how a more forceful abolitionist stance by Lincoln could have led to more successes in the Civil War, ending slavery earlier, and softening racism. Ultimately, he concludes that Lincoln's failure to be decisive doomed Reconstruction. VERDICT While not all readers will agree with the author's insights, his arguments about Adams's foresight into slavery's violent end will find many takers. Kaplan effectively demonstrates how moral courage must be the true measure of leadership.—Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Library Journal

★ 2017-04-10
A fresh look at John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, the Civil War, abolitionism, and other related American history.The great 19th-century champion of black equality was not Lincoln, writes Kaplan (Emeritus, English/Queens Coll.; John Quincy Adams: American Visionary, 2014, etc.), who has authored biographies of both of his principal figures. In this insightful, often disturbing dual biography, he makes a convincing case that Adams, working decades before Lincoln, was the real hero. The ex-president returned to Washington as a member of the House of Representatives in 1830. He never liked slavery, but it was not a priority during his presidency. In 1836, enraged by anti-slavery petitions, Southern representatives passed the legendary "gag rule" that forbade their discussion. Galvanized to action, Adams fought, eventually successfully, to overturn it, thereby becoming abolition's leading spokesman until his death. Kaplan emphasizes that, unlike all other great men who disapproved of slavery (from Jefferson to Lincoln), Adams never qualified his opposition with racist rhetoric. A consummate politician, Lincoln could not offend Illinois voters who overwhelmingly considered blacks subhuman and loathed abolitionists. Lincoln publicly agreed, but his private writings give little comfort. He opposed slavery on humanitarian grounds, but, unlike Adams, "Lincoln would not go the next step…from antislavery moralism to antislavery activism." As the Civil War raged, Lincoln fended off abolitionists, aware that most Northerners continued to despise them. The Emancipation Proclamation, a feeble step, was, as he feared, widely unpopular, but it was also the beginning of the end of the practice of slavery. This is accepted history, but readers accustomed to the worshipful History Channel view will squirm to learn that Lincoln never believed that blacks could live among whites as equals. Adams believed, and Kaplan drives this home in a fine portrait of a great man far ahead of his time. An eye-opening biography from a trusted source on the topic.

Kirkus Reviews