James Oakes discusses The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution

Dr. Oakes will give his analysis of Lincoln’s strategies regarding this struggle and reveals a striking consistency and commitment that extended over a period of many years. For Lincoln, the lynchpin of antislavery was the Constitution. He adopted the view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the country, slavery the exception. Oakes has an international reputation for path-breaking scholarship in addressing United States history. Two of his works, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics (2007) and Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865, earned, respectively, the 2008 and 2013 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. An alumnus of Baruch College, Dr. Oakes holds his masters and doctorate degrees from the University of California-Berkeley. He serves on the faculty of the Graduate Center of the City University of New York where he has been Graduate School Humanities Chair since 1998. He previously taught at Princeton and Northwestern Universities.