Background
Oakes, James was born on December 19, 1953 in New York City. Son of Frank and Joan Oakes.
Oakes, James was born on December 19, 1953 in New York City. Son of Frank and Joan Oakes.
Oakes attended Catholic schools in New York City, before enrolling at Baruch College, City University of New York, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in history in 1974. Oakes earned his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of California, Berkeley, under the late Kenneth Stampp, author of The Peculiar Institution among other notable titles.
He taught previously at Princeton University and Northwestern University. Oakes" The Radical and the Republican (2007) is notable for presenting a new framework with which to compare Lincoln and Douglass and their views of race. The Lincoln Prize jury also noted that Oakes succeeded in creating a scholarly work which was accessible to the general public.
His more recent work focuses on Emancipation and how it was implemented throughout the Southern states.
Oakes has written and published many articles, encyclopedia entries, and Op-Eds. David Brion Davis, writing in The New York Review of Books, identified the basic theme of Freedom National (2012) as the view that Lincoln"s Republican Party had been an antislavery party both before and during the war, one which viewed defining humans as chattel as both a violation of the "freedom principle" embodied in natural and international law and a violation of the United States Constitution, which defined slaves as "persons held in service".
Eric Foner called the work "the best account ever written of the complex historical process known as emancipation".
Married Deborah Bohr, June 10, 1980. 1 child Daniel Augustin.