‘The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Anti-Slavery Constitution’ by James Oakes

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The Crooked Path to Abolition by James Oakes

James Oakes clarifies a complicated argument over the U.S. Constitution in simple prose by explaining that America’s foundational document permitted slavery yet implied its eventual demise. Some of the founders were anti-slavery and some favored the institution. As Oakes puts it, “it is simply not possible to discern a unified group of founders whose intentions can be readily discerned.”

The City University of New York instructor teases out the constitutional interpretations of that singular figure of Emancipation, Abraham Lincoln. In The Crooked Path to Abolition, Oakes disputes the idea that Lincoln’s views on slavery evolved over time. Rather, he finds consistency. Marshalling a case from the Emancipator’s words and actions, Oakes shows that Lincoln never actually endorsed political or social equality for Blacks; he advocated due process for fugitive slaves but was not a radical abolitionist. He hated slavery as immoral and understood the Declaration of Independence as making a promise of human rights that the Constitution didn’t keep. He was eager to keep slavery from expanding into the western territories but content to tolerate the institution where it already existed—until the Civil War provided his legal mind with an excuse to break the status quo.

Drawing on British common law even before his election to the presidency, Lincoln spoke of “forfeiture of rights” when a party to an agreement (the states that accepted the Constitution) no longer abides by the contract (by seceding from the Union). The breakaway by the states of the Confederacy amounted to breach of contract, and with his powers as commander-in-chief in mind, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in terms of confiscating enemy property during wartime.

The steps were pragmatic, but they achieved the sought-for goal of ending slavery. However, the universal promise of the Declaration of Independence continues American society in 150 years after Lincoln.