38 pages • 1-hour read
The Radical and the Republican
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Themes
Constitutionality and the Role of the Government in Private Affairs
One of the major themes present in The Radical and the Republican is the Constitution of the United States and how it governs the role of the American government. As the supreme law of the land, the Constitution dictates how the government must behave in all situations, and it both limits and extends certain powers to individual branches so that no singular entity can become too strong.
The problem regarding the Constitution is that it is not a clear document. It must be interpreted by each generation, which can often lead to confusion over the meaning and intent of the framers and Founding Fathers. For The Radical and the Republican, the theme of the Constitution is returned to over and over again because of how differing parties, particularly Lincoln and Douglass, view the power of the federal government in ending slavery.
As a strong supporter of the Constitution, Lincoln believed that it was an anti-slavery document. However, he struggled with how much power and what powers, exactly, it extended to him as President of the United States. He initially favored acting through Congress, so as to give the perception that the end of slavery was a popular opinion among the people, not a single, authoritarian act on the part of an anti-slavery president.
Originally skeptical of the Constitution because he viewed it as something enabling the perpetuation of slavery, Douglass eventually came to view the Constitution in a favorable light, even to the point of believing that it gave Lincoln and the Office of the President supreme power to end slavery as he saw fit, given that it was antithetical to all of the other principles upon which the Union was founded.
Race Relations: Racial Prejudices, Social Class, and the Organization of Society
Race relations forms the core of The Radical and the Republican. The relationship between white and African-Americans has long been colored by the institution of slavery and its legacy. For white Americans, merely the end of slavery seemed to have served the purpose of granting African-Americans equality. However, for many African-Americans still dealing with the lingering prejudice caused by the legacy of slavery, equality required full inclusion into the American political, social, and economic system.
The way in which whites of the 19th century viewed African-Americans also forms the backdrop for the book, as it shows how there was often, even among the most progressive and educated, a disconnect between seeing African-Americans as people deserving of equal treatment with whites. This is evidenced by the fact that many leading reformers favored an idea of colonization because they believed that once freed, African-Americans could not live side-by-side with whites. This feeling was caused by the fact that whites, especially poor whites in the South, would come to resent the fact that the former slaves were now their equals and competing with them for jobs and status. They also believed that African-Americans would cause a perpetual rift in society because they were inherently inferior to white Americans, even if they were people deserving of freedom.
Thus, even after the end of slavery, America was cast along racial lines, with blacks and whites keeping to their own communities, and with only certain avenues and jobs open to even the most educated of African-Americans.
Political Savvy, Posturing, and Positioning
The Radical and the Republican spends much time examining both the political and moral characters of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass in order to better explain both how they saw each other and how they acted in public discourse. Given the one of the main principles of liberal democracy is compromise, the ability of a politician to compromise and strategize elevates one from the other. In this sense, The Radical and the Republican views Lincoln as the supreme politician who was able to initiate sweeping change by bringing many varying people and viewpoints together to gather an ultimate consensus that slavery in America should be abolished.
The book also pays careful attention to the different requirements and roles filled by reformers and politicians. It clearly casts Lincoln as a politician who believed in reform, and who thus acted slowly to build consensus and unity, whereas Douglass was a reformer who sought to push through his ideas and changes as quickly as possible regardless of how this was to be done. It is also this difference in perspective that caused much of the friction between the men, though it mostly being Douglass’s frustration towards Lincoln seemingly dragging his feet on social issues.
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