Lincoln as a frightened raccoon, Punch, January 11, 1862 (Library of Congress)
Posted on 10/04/2019 11:30:12 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege
Sure, we revere Lincoln today, but in his lifetime the bile poured on him from every quarter makes today’s Internet vitriol seem dainty. His ancestry was routinely impugned, his lack of formal learning ridiculed, his appearance maligned, and his morality assailed. We take for granted, of course, the scornful outpouring from the Confederate states...But the vituperation wasn’t limited to enemies of the Union. The North was ever at his heels...
Yes, his sure-footed leadership during this country’s most-difficult days was accompanied by a fair amount of praise, but also by a steady stream of abuse—in editorials, speeches, journals, and private letters—from those on his own side, those dedicated to the very causes he so ably championed.
George Templeton Strong, a prominent New York lawyer and diarist, wrote that Lincoln was “a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla.” Henry Ward Beecher, the Connecticut-born preacher and abolitionist, often ridiculed Lincoln in his newspaper, The Independent (New York), rebuking him for his lack of refinement and calling him “an unshapely man.” Other Northern newspapers openly called for his assassination long before John Wilkes Booth pulled the trigger. He was called a coward, “an idiot,” and “the original gorilla” by none other than the commanding general of his armies, George McClellan.
One of Lincoln’s lasting achievements was ending American slavery. Yet Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the famous abolitionist, called Lincoln “Dishonest Abe” in a letter she wrote to Wendell Phillips in 1864, a year after Lincoln had freed the slaves in rebel states and only months before he would engineer the Thirteenth Amendment. She bemoaned the “incapacity and rottenness” of his administration to Susan B. Anthony, worked to deny him renomination, and swore to Phillips that if he “is reelected I shall immediately leave the country for the Fijee Islands.”
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
Lincoln as a frightened raccoon, Punch, January 11, 1862 (Library of Congress)
A timely post. Thank you.
He was a detrrmined individual and shrewd.
Saved the union by destroying the Constituion.
General William Tecumseh Sherman knew full well, the evilness of the media, and did everything he could to make their life miserable.
Exactly.
A bit more patience and slavery would have been eradicated in the South, by the South, in 10 maybe 20 years at the most. There were FAR more abolitionist societies in the South than the North.
Now, I find the concept of slavery completely odious, but the civil war was absolutely the greater of two evils.
Lincoln - second worst President ever.
I visited the Lincoln museum in Springfield and along one corridor wall there were scores of vicious editorial cartoons and nasty editorials displayed.
After correcting your misspellings, I disagree.
He didn't destroy the Constitution, he did kick it in the balls.
It yelped, laid down and and recovered.
The USA was under assault then, as it is now, and Honest Abe, took extreme measures, and they worked.
Destroyed the Constitution, HELL NO, it is still working, you stupid ...
Odd that The Atlantic, a flagship of lefty MSM propaganda, would run an article that can be applied to our current president.
Pretty cool.
Uh oh. You triggered the anti-Abe mob.
Incoming.
Please forgiventhe typos. Working on a teentiny keyboard and zcreen.
Don’t forget the advances in modern funeraries, thanks to his financing the war by selling officers’ bodies back to families.
https://connectingdirectors.com/54261-lincoln-embalming
Not surprisingly the article you linked to did not contain that outright falsehood about selling officer bodies to finance the war. Was that claim your own creation or did you find it somewhere?
And you base that on what exactly?
There were FAR more abolitionist societies in the South than the North.
Source please?
Strike 3, you’re OUT.
Focus your condemnation and condescension on another freeper.
Better luck in 2024.
He broke the amendment process. There was no possible way that states would willingly vote for the 13th amendment, and using the Army to threaten states to do as Washington DC directed them is not a valid constitutional means of ratifying an amendment.
Then there were the threats and bribes he put forth to do it.
I think breaking the ratification process is defacto breaking the constitution, and Lincoln flat out defied Article IV, section 2.
Wait until the statue destroyers start reading Lincoln’s quotes, and actual feelings, on the black race.
Maybe they’ll create a plaza where the Lincoln Memorial now stands, and fly rainbow flags.
And at least the original confederates were honest about the reasons why they were seceding.
But the North wasn't honest about the reasons why they stopped them.
On the other hand, do you think the Southern states did that voluntarily? I find that hard to believe, because the long standing narrative was that they fought a war or something to preserve slavery, so it strikes me as implausible that they would simply give up something they supposedly sacrificed so many people to protect.
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