Posted on 09/01/2016 4:54:37 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
It’s funny to think of Lincoln and Seward as big fans of the plays ... although plenty of more recent Presidents have really enjoyed movies!
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly
He sure damns the opera with faint praise ... or do I mean praises it with faint damns.
I understand why Strong and other Republican leaders would think the fire-eaters would climb down off the ledge (to mix metaphors) if a Republican were elected President. After all, there was no Republican proposal actually to abolish slavery. All that might have happened is the admission of Kansas as a free state and probable restoration of the Missouri Compromise.
The problem with that assumption is it doesn’t recognize the southern fear of a northern Senate majority, which they saw as fatal to their cause, in the long run. They saw admission of Kansas as a free state as the beginning of the end of their way of life. You’re right that many Republicans probably miscalculated on that score.
But it was a pipe-dream to think Kansas or points west were suitable for plantation agriculture and slave labor. By 1861, slavery was illegal in almost all European colonies and throughout Latin America except for Brazil. They were on the wrong side of history and geography.
The Diary of George Templeton Strong, Edited by Allan Nevins and Milton Halsey Thomas, Abridged by Thomas J. Pressly
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