Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln [Hardcover]

John Stauffer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 3, 2008

Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln were the preeminent self-made men of their time. In this masterful dual biography, award-winning Harvard University scholar John Stauffer describes the transformations in the lives of these two giants during a major shift in cultural history, when men rejected the status quo and embraced new ideals of personal liberty. As Douglass and Lincoln reinvented themselves and ultimately became friends, they transformed America.


Lincoln was born dirt poor, had less than one year of formal schooling, and became the nation's greatest president. Douglass spent the first twenty years of his life as a slave, had no formal schooling-in fact, his masters forbade him to read or write-and became one of the nation's greatest writers and activists, as well as a spellbinding orator and messenger of audacious hope, the pioneer who blazed the path traveled by future African-American leaders.


At a time when most whites would not let a black man cross their threshold, Lincoln invited Douglass into the White House. Lincoln recognized that he needed Douglass to help him destroy the Confederacy and preserve the Union; Douglass realized that Lincoln's shrewd sense of public opinion would serve his own goal of freeing the nation's blacks. Their relationship shifted in response to the country's debate over slavery, abolition, and emancipation.


Both were ambitious men. They had great faith in the moral and technological progress of their nation. And they were not always consistent in their views. John Stauffer describes their personal and political struggles with a keen understanding of the dilemmas Douglass and Lincoln confronted and the social context in which they occurred. What emerges is a brilliant portrait of how two of America's greatest leaders lived.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Like Paul and Steven Kendrick, authors of the recent Douglass and Lincoln, Stauffer has to scale up to achieve book size, since the men’s personal relationship consisted of just three meetings. Stauffer does that partially by using the Kendricks’ method of chronicling Douglass’ criticisms of Lincoln and partially by presenting a dual biography couched in the theme of the self-made man. As he hits the mile markers of the men’s rise from nothing, Stauffer, an English professor, often speculates about what each man “certainly” or “would have” thought about events in their lives (such as Lincoln’s supposed homosexuality, of which Stauffer is convinced, despite acknowledging there is no explicit evidence). This casts his narrative more as historical essay than straightforward history. Stauffer also emphasizes what he regards as key features of the men’s interaction, such as a friendship, perhaps genuine, perhaps diffident, growing out of Lincoln’s incremental adoption of the abolitionist position championed by Douglass. A work well worth the attention of students of emancipation. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

"John Stauffer's GIANTS is a lyrical, insightful treatment of the fascinating relationship between two geniuses, one a politician and the other a radical reformer. Both Lincoln and Douglass heard the music of words in their heads as few others, and Stauffer has an ear for the two of them in harmony. That they started in such different places ideologically and yet moved together at the critical moment of emancipation makes this a timely and important book. Stauffer brings the tools of literature and history to bear on this comparison with unmatched skill." (David W. Blight, Yale University, author of Frederick Douglass' Civil War and A Slave No More )

"In this stunning book, John Stauffer has given us the most insightful portrait of either Lincoln or Douglass in years. In graceful prose, he tells a moving story of the two men who dominated Nineteenth century American life -- as allies across the racial divide, friends who drew common inspiration from hard scrabble beginnings and a love of language, and fellow travelers on the road of American self-making. Giants is simply must reading!" (Richard S. Newman, author of Freedom's Prophet: Bishop Richard Allen, the AME Church, and the Black Founding Fathers )

Like a daguerreotype, which nineteenth-century Americans thought captured not simply surface appearances, but peoples' souls, this book moves beyond biography to allow us to recover the inner lives of two utterly uncommon common men. This is the most insightful book about race and friendship in the nineteenth century that I have read. It's poignant and perceptive, a book to be savored, a book that will last. (Steven Mintz, Columbia University, author of America and Its Peoples: A Mosaic in the Making )

"John Stauffer's collective biography of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln stands apart from other biographies by focusing on how each man continually remade himself, with help from women, words, self-education, physical strength, and luck. In the process Stauffer gives us the texture and feel--a "thick description"--of the strange worlds that Douglass and Lincoln inhabited. The result is a path-breaking work that dissolves traditional conceptions of these two seminal figures (Lincoln the "redeemer" president, Douglass the assimilationist). He reveals how Douglass towered over Lincoln as a brilliant orator, writer, agitator, and public figure for most of his life. He shows us how words became potent weapons for both men. And he tells the poignant story of how these preeminent self-made men ultimately converged, despite their vastly different agendas and politics, and helped transform the nation." (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Harvard University, author of The African American Century: How Black Americans Have Shaped Our Century )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Twelve; First Edition edition (November 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0446580090
• ISBN-13: 978-0446580090
• Product Dimensions: 6.4 x 1.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #298,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

JOHN STAUFFER is Chair of the History of American Civilization and Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Among the leading scholars of the Civil War era, antislavery, and interracial alliances, he is the author or editor of seven book and more than 50 articles. GIANTS: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (2008), received the 2009 Iowa Author's Award, a Boston Writer's Club award, and was a Boston Globe and Amazon.com bestseller and a History Book Club featured selection. His other books include The Writings of James McCune Smith: Black Intellectual and Abolitionist (2006), which showcases the work of the foremost black intellectual in the nineteenth century; The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform (with Steven Mintz, 2006); Meteor of War: The John Brown Story (with Zoe Trodd); and The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race (2002), a collective biography of black and white abolitionists that won four major awards, including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Avery Craven Book Prize, and the Lincoln Prize runner-up.
John's essays have appeared in Time Magazine, Times Literary Supplement, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Raritan, New York Sun, and 21st: The Journal of Contemporary Photography. He has appeared on national radio and television shows, including the Diane Rehm Show and Book TV with Susan Swain, and he has lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe.
In 2006-08 John served as a consultant for the filmmaker Gary Ross (Seabiscuit, Dave, Big, Pleasantville, The Tale of Desperaux), who has completed a screenplay and will direct a film on Unionism and interracial alliances in Civil War Mississippi. John co-authored a history of the story, The State of Jones, with Sally Jenkins, which was published by Doubleday in July 2009.
John received his M.A. from Purdue University in 1993 and his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1999, when he began teaching at Harvard. He received tenure in 2004. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, Deborah Cunningham, and their sons Erik Isaiah and Nicholas Daniel Stauffer.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Revisionist-good, not great August 9, 2009

By Lew Craig

Format:Hardcover

There are some problems with "Giants." I have to agree with the review by person from Louisville that the characterization of Lincoln and his family as "white trash" was over the top. That term has contemporary implications which were not true for the Lincoln family.

Furthermore, I have a problem with the author blanketing the relationship between Lincoln and Speed as homosexual. If he were writing about contemporary people who had said the things Speed and Lincoln wrote to one another I would tend to agree with his conclusions. But this was a different age. The language of expression and relationships were quite different. It was not unusual for men to sleep together as a matter of convenience. We do not know what happened between Lincoln and Speed. For the author to broach the subject is not a problem, but to reach the conclusions he did without examining other possibilities is completely revisionist. I have read other biographies of Lincoln that discuss the relationship, but are willing to look at the relationship with open minds. Certainly those we admire, respect and look to are human as are the rest of us. Many outstanding intellects and leaders have been homosexual, but right or wrong, it is a stretch to attribute tendencies to an individual where such a tendency may not exist. It is not good history. Whether Lincoln and Speed were in a homosexual relationship is not the issue. Such a relationship would not diminish the greatness of Lincoln. The historical assumption of such a relationship were none may have existed is the problem. This assumption leads me to question other conclusions of the author.

"Giants" is a fine concept. I did not find as many parallels between Lincoln and Douglass as I had anticipated, but it was a fascinating study. The author did a wonderful job of pointing out Lincoln's prejudice again blacks, something that is often overlooked today. he also did a fine work of showing how Lincoln grew, not only in his relationship with Douglass, but in his realization that emancipation was the only answer to the slavery question. I wish he would have explored the reasons for Douglass' moderation in his later years. I kept wanting a bit more depth and examination of the Douglass. The last decades of his life were glossed over. I would have liked more

For the potential reader, it is an easy read and moves quite well. Whether one agrees with my criticisms or not, there is a lot to learn in "Giants."

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant as a Powerful Novel November 5, 2008

By John Wood

Format:Hardcover

This is a brilliant and deeply moving book. There is no reason for me to repeat the praise others have so justly given it, but I would like to mention one feature that has not yet been pointed out. Stauffer's prose reads with the same brilliance of a powerful novelist's prose. I hate to use a cliché, but I couldn't put it down. I opened it planning to read a bit and then go on to other things I had to do that afternoon. But I read into the evening and then the following days until I quickly finished it. It is not merely the beauty of Stauffer's prose style that pulls the reader in, but also his skillful handling of the two narratives he unfolds. Even though I knew the general facts of both men's lives, I was captivated by the way Stauffer developed their characters, and I kept wanting to know what was going to happen next. John Stauffer is not only a major historian, he is also a great story teller.

16 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I've read for a very long time November 6, 2008

By F.L. Jenkinson

Format:Hardcover

As the nation's preeminent scholar of interracial friendship, John Stauffer turns in Giants from his previous prize-winning work on abolitionist friends to offer the first collective biography of the two preeminent self-made men in American history: Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln. That previous book, The Black Hearts of Men, was a hard act to follow but Stauffer goes even further here in Giants. Vivid, insightful, exceptionally well-researched and beautifully written, Giants restores to both mythic figures their complexity, ambiguity, and humanity, giving us an entirely fresh vision of two individuals who transformed themselves before they could transform society. Just as exciting, though, is the parallel narrative of national identity. As Stauffer reflects one giant off the other, we see in their intersecting lives a national journey toward the Second Revolution of the 1860s. This braided story of Lincoln and Douglass, one of change and self-making, alliance and conflict, faith and loss, is the nation¿s own story of bonds and betrayals during the nineteenth century. In fact, while other books might focus on Douglass and Lincoln's politics during the Civil War, only Stauffer examines the bigger picture: the ways they made and remade themselves and the nation their lives, loves, friendships, and the whole nature of love and friendship in the Civil War era. He weaves together themes of historical memory, race, gender, loyalty and forgiveness, empathy, outsiders, and the boundaries of the personal and political. The book therefore gives us a deeper, fuller picture of both men's lives and characters, and also a window on a whole era. This is history and biography written in glorious techicolor: set against Douglass, Lincoln comes alive anew - and vice versa - but so too does the intense drama of the time. And that history is a living drama: after the election of Barack Obama, a man who is said to transcend race but also has finally replaced Lincoln (and Clinton) as the nation's first 'black president,' has publicly grappled with the changing nature of his own friendships, and acknowledges the political and personal inspiration of both Douglass and Lincoln, we might find in Stauffer's dazzling page-turner a framework for understanding the story of Obama and ourselves in 2008. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.