James Oakes

James Oakes is the author of several acclaimed books on slavery and the Civil War. His most recent book, Freedom National, won the Lincoln Prize and was a long-list selection for the National Book Award. He lives in New York City.

Books in order of publication:

• The Ruling Race: A History of American Slaveholders, Knopf, 1982.
• Larry J. Griffin; Don Harrison Doyle, eds. (1995).
• Slavery and Freedom: An Interpretation of the Old South. W. W. Norton & Company. 1998. James Oakes (historian).
• The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics. W. W. Norton & Company. 2007.
• Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861-1865. W. W. Norton & Company. 2013.
• The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War, W.W. Norton & Company, 2014.
• The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution, W.W. Norton & Company, forthcoming Jan. 12, 2021.