Giants: the parallel lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln

by: John Stauffer

Published by: Twelve

Reviewed by Gene Hayworth

With the popularity of President-elect Barrack Obama and his interest in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book Team of Rivals: the political genius of Abraham Lincoln, there has been a corresponding resurgence of interest in America’s 16th president. More than 25 books about Abraham Lincoln have been released or scheduled for release in 2008, covering a wide variety of topics, from analysis of his speeches and his family life to discussion of his wartime policies and his assassination.

In Giants: the parallel lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, historian John Stauffer takes a more unusual approach, tracing the lines where the passions and accomplishments of Abraham Lincoln intersect and diverge with those of his contemporary, the journalist and abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

Stauffer examines a series of compatible traits between these two eminent figures that includes their physical stature and their intellectual curiosity. Both were self-educated men born into situations where education held little value. Both read Shakespeare and Robert Burns and Lord Byron (among many others), and both men had experienced bondage–Douglass as a slave and Lincoln as a boy who had been hired out for pay by his father. Though they arrived at their conclusions regarding emancipation in different ways, both championed abolition of slavery and the equality of all men.

Giants begins with a prologue that recounts Douglass’s first meeting with the President in August 1863, a meeting that established a foundation for their mutual, life-long respect. In a series of four chapters Stauffer compares and contrasts the lives of these two great men, in a lively, informative narrative that provides a chronological examination of their intellectual and philosophical development. The final chapter, “Friends,” offers a poignant account of President Lincoln’s assassination. The “Epilogue” provides details of Douglass’s later life, until his death in 1895. Throughout the book Stauffer supplies a wealth of information about the War and the prolonged struggle for emancipation.

The book will appeal to anyone interested in these two important figures as well as those who enjoy reading about the Civil War and American history.

Armchair Interviews says: The author is on the Harvard faculty.