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

Written by James Oakes

Narrated by Bob Souer

An award-winning scholar uncovers the guiding principles of Lincoln’s antislavery strategies.



Lincoln adopted the antislavery view that the Constitution made freedom the rule in the United States, slavery the exception. Where federal power prevailed, so did freedom. Where state power prevailed, that state determined the status of slavery, and the federal government could not interfere. It would take state action to achieve the final abolition of American slavery. With this understanding, Lincoln and his antislavery allies used every tool available to undermine the institution. Wherever the Constitution empowered direct federal action, they intervened. As a congressman in 1849 Lincoln sponsored a bill to abolish slavery in Washington, DC. He reentered politics in 1854 to oppose what he considered the unconstitutional opening of the territories to slavery by the Kansas–Nebraska Act.



President Lincoln took full advantage of the antislavery options opened by the Civil War. The Emancipation Proclamation, a military order of the president, undermined slavery across the South. It led to abolition by six slave states, which then joined the coalition to affect what Lincoln called the "King’s cure": state ratification of the constitutional amendment that in 1865 finally abolished slavery.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Highbridge Company
• Release date: Jan 12, 2021
• ISBN: 9781696603126

Reviews for The Crooked Path to Abolition

[nbmars · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

James Oakes, one of our foremost Civil War historians, proposes in this book that the way to understand Lincoln’s position on slavery was not to focus on his emotional response, by which Lincoln considered slavery to be a social, political, and moral evil, but rather on his fierce devotion to the rule of law and the sanctity of the Union.

Lincoln, Oakes argues, was committed to “antislavery constitutionalism.”

Lincoln believed that the Declaration of Independence “meant that, at the very least, everybody was entitled to be free. It also meant that the promise of universal freedom was embodied in the Constitution.”

Lincoln once likened the Declaration to a picture, the Constitution to its frame. “The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple --- not the apple for the picture.”

Thus for Lincoln, the egalitarian principles of the Declaration of Independence were ‘embodied’ in the United States Constitution. For Lincoln, Oakes writes, “. . . the conclusion was inescapable. . . . In the phraseology of his day, the Constitution made freedom the rule and slavery the exception.”

Lincoln, in a speech on June 26, 1857, insisted that the Founders “meant to set up a standard maxim for free society, which should be familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated, and thereby constantly spreading and deepening its influence. . . . ” In other words, the purpose of law is to establish normative standards, and act as a bridge, from that which is, to that which ought to be. This philosophy was reified in the Declaration of Independence.

As Lincoln said in Peoria in 1854, we must re-adopt the Declaration along with practices and policies that harmonize with the plain meaning of the words set forth in the document:

“If we do this, we shall not only have saved the Union; but we shall have so saved it, as to make, and to keep it, forever worthy of the saving. We shall have so saved it, that the succeeding millions of free happy people, the world over, shall rise up, and call us blessed, to the latest generations.”

Evaluation: Oakes makes a subtle argument well worth perusing. Lincoln was only the 16th president, and the meaning of the Constitution was still a matter of salient public debate. Oakes takes us back to that time so we can put the slavery issue into that context, and understand Lincoln’s positions from a more period-specific point of view.