The frontier lawyer and the former slave, the cautious politician and the fiery reformer, the president and the most famous black man in America - their lives met in the bloody landscape of secession, civil war and emancipation. Opponents at first, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln gradually became allies, each influenced by and attracted to the other. James Oakes brings these two iconic figures to life and sheds new light on the central issues of slavery, race and equality in Civil War America.