During the Introduction to The Radical and the Republican, James Oakes beings by trying to reframe the way in which many readers may first approach the book. Assuming a baseline knowledge of Abraham Lincoln, he first presents the historic Lincoln-Douglas Debates not in grand, florid terms that one might associate with it since it is often considered “[o]ne of the great highlights of American political discourse” (xvi). Instead, Oakes shows the human element present in the politics of the time. It is not, necessarily, the high-level intellectual exchange of noble ideas but instead filled with “vulgarity” (xv). By doing this, Oakes wants to jar readers out of a sense of noble nostalgia for the past and to present them with the facts, the events, and the words that took place during the lead up to and during the American Civil War (1861-1865).

Using the Lincoln-Douglas Debates as the backdrop, Oakes then introduces Frederick Douglass, the famed abolitionist and escaped slave turned author who is often invariably tied to Abraham Lincoln, and therefore mis-represented as a constant and staunch Lincoln ally. Oakes firmly grounds the reader in the understanding that, at the outset, Lincoln and Douglass were anything but allies, such that the mere associate with Douglass would have been enough to verifiably sink Lincoln’s senatorial aspirations in 1858 (xvi-xvii).