The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution is a non-fiction book by James Oakes published in 2021 by W. W. Norton & Company.

The book is the last in a trilogy of histories by Oakes dealing with anti-slavery constitutionism, including Freedom National (2013) and The Scorpion’s Sting (2014).Kreitner, 2021.

Oakes examines the development of anti-slavery constitutionalism, whose political advocates detected in the Constitution of the United States principles and antecedents that challenged a long-held proslavery interpretation of the document.Kreitner, 2021. "The Crooked Path explores the legal and political justification behind the antislavery program—namely, that the Constitution was in fact an antislavery document, contrary to the claims of both slavery's defenders and the noisiest faction of its radical critics."Rathke, 2022 pp. 196-197. "Oakes ... examines antislavery constitutionalism as a political tradition that emerged from active legal and political conflict. Starting from the 1787 Constitutional Convention, he identifies consistent efforts by political opponents of slavery to pressure the federal government to undermine slavery through Constitutional power."

The Crooked Path to Abolition was named a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and won the 2021 Harold Holzer Book Prize from The Lincoln Forum.The Harold Holzer Lincoln Forum Book Prize

Contents PREFACE "That Glorious Fabric of Collected Wisdom": A Brief History of the Antislavery Constitution "Freedom Is the Rule, Slavery Is the Exception": The Emergence of Antislavery Constitutionalism The Antislavery Project: Lincoln and Antislavery Politics "My Ancient Faith": Lincoln, Race, and the Antislavery Constitution The Forfeiture of Rights: Emancipation before the Proclamation "A King's Cure": Lincoln and the Origins of the Thirteenth Amendment

Reviews

Professor Gordon S. Wood called The Crooked Path to Abolition "a very solid, carefully and rigorously argued book."Wood, 2021. "In 'The Crooked Path to Abolition,' his very solid, carefully and rigorously argued book, Oakes ... describes and analyzes the antislavery constitutionalism that emerged in a dialectical struggle with pro-slavery constitutionalism in antebellum America."

Historian Joseph Rathke, writing in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, summarizes the central theme of The Crooked Path to Abolition:

Allen C. Guelzo wrote in the Claremont Review of Books:

See also Abraham Lincoln Slavery and the United States Constitution Abolitionism in the United States Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution

Footnotes

Sources Guelzo, Allen C. "The Antislavery Project: Abraham Lincoln and the anti-slavery movement". Claremont Review of Books, Spring 2021. Kreitner, Richard. 2021. "Did the Constitution Pave the Way to Emancipation?" The Nation, October 6, 2021. Oakes, James. 2021. The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution. W. W. Norton & Company, New York. Rathke, Joseph. 2022. Review: "The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution by James Oakes." Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Summer/Fall 2022, Vol. 115, No. 2/3, pp. 196-198. Wood, Gordon S. 2021. "Was the Constitution a Pro-Slavery Document?" The New York Times, January 12, 2021.