This book needs to be read, though, for its uses of contradiction. Oakes places Lincoln squarely in the vanguard of what he calls the “antislavery project” of the Republican Party, and not as a reluctant late arrival. While Eric Foner analyzed Lincoln’s evolution toward the pivotal decisions for abolition in the midst of the Civil War, Oakes sees the sixteenth president as a full believer progressing pragmatically toward ever more radical views. These are really two complementary variations on the story of Lincoln’s growth on race and slavery.