The Scorpions Sting: Chapter Analysis

The Scorpions Sting is a very interesting book written by James Oakes. The book is outlined with four chapters. Chapters one through three explain the Republicans anti slavery policy, which significantly ties directly in with the metaphor and name of the book The Scorpions Sting. The Republicans believe that slavery could easily be done away with without any implications (War and Federal Government getting involved) and their way of doing this way by withdrawing federal support for slavery as a whole. To implement this idea the Republican Party would: stop promoting the spread of slavery, stop allowing it to show up in Washington D.C. and in U.S. military places, stop helping slave owners with the recapture of run-aways, and they also believed that they could try and surround slave states with free

states.

They called it “ a cordon of fire,” then they figured “slavery, like a scorpion, would sting itself to death”(pg. 20). They used state-by-state emancipation, starting with the Border States, and then working their way down. Once the war started, they applied their scorpion sting strategy once again through military emancipation, this is the forth chapter. This chapter amalgamates three different things: arming slaves, freeing slaves, and ending slavery. The U.S. Military emancipation was the permanent end to the Institution of slavery. After all was said and done it seemed like a good idea, a scorpion can kill itself with the small amount of venom it had, but this was a beast of a problem, like a whale sized problem compared to a scorpion sized problem. War really was the only outcome, I mean slavery was a huge problem, but that’s all the South had really ever known. Without it, the south would struggle to survive, because that’s how they thrived, through farming, sadly it had become a way of life in the South, in a dark part of history for the United

States.

It seems as though Oakes is trying to fill in a gap of history. This gap resides between the period of abolitionism and anti slavery government. The book seems to favor a republican party committed to the eradication of slavery in the United States of America through policy of ending support for the institution, a policy that is insufficient and almost makes it seem like they weren’t really sincere with its establishment. Oakes takes us back, making us take a long hard look at the Republican’s policy to bring a halt to slavery in the U.S. , while many see their policy as underachieved, this book adheres the reader to take the Republican Party’s policy serious. Oakes’s knows that policy would not be enough to destroy slavery, nothing that big can be eradicated through policy and law. He wants us to think about what exactly was going on in the minds of the party and that in all efforts they were trying to avoid was at all cost. In Conclusion, The Scorpions sting really clears up the smoke around the Republicans policy at the time, there was little about the war, but I feel that was Oakes biggest goal. Oakes used the book to take a look inside the heads and hearts of the Republican Party and its policies through the abolition of slavery. Oakes concludes that things went far from going as planned, but impedes that there was no easy way to abolish slavery.