James Oakes is a prominent and rigorous historian of the 19th century and the Civil War. The Massachusetts Historical Society in a recent webinar hosted Oakes in conversation with Randall Kennedy to discuss his newest book The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution.
Here he offers a sharp critique of the Pulitzer Prize winning The 1619 Project, led by Nikole Hannah Jones. He argues strongly that the project is often factually wrong, and driven by a narrow nationalist agenda. He recognizes Lincoln as an anti-slavery pessimist who supported `colonization' but eventually - at Gettysburg - embraced a vision of the Constitution perhaps best expressed by him in the Gettysburg Address, grounding his vision in the Declaration of Independence's opening lines. - GWC
By James Oakes
The 1619 Project claims to reveal the unknown history of slavery and racism in the United States, when in fact these topics have been the subject of intense scholarly investigation for decades. What distinguishes the project is the ideological bias that leads its editors to erase the history of antislavery and distort the history of slavery.
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