[Do not dub me shapka broham]

It's interesting, because the composition of Abraham Lincoln's war cabinet disproves-beyond a shadow of a doubt-the wild fantasies concocted-in later years-about Lincoln's hostility towards the South.

His replacement for Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, was not only a staunch Democrat, but a supporter of the secessionist candidate, i.e., Breckrinridge, in the pivotal 1860 presidential election, illustrates this fact more vividly than any other.

Combine this with Lincoln's choice of a border state Whig/Republican, i.e., Bates, for Attorney General, and his choice of a moderate antislavery senator and chief rival for the Rep. nomination, William Seward, for Sec'y of State, and it's hard to believe that anyone would accuse President Lincoln of being some sort of dogmatic, unyielding ideologue.

[capitan_refugio]

And, I might add, he put former democrat Senator from Tennesee, Andrew Johnson, on the ticket in 1864. I recall, too, that he had been friends with former southern Whig Alexander Stephens, when they served in Congress together. Had the deep south not "flown the coop" prior to Lincoln's inauguration, I would not have been surprised if he had included southerners, such as Stephens, in his cabinet.

[lentulusgracchus]

His replacement for Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, was not only a staunch Democrat, but a supporter of the secessionist candidate, i.e., Breckrinridge, in the pivotal 1860 presidential election, illustrates this fact more vividly than any other.

As a young man before he professed law, Stanton studied in the same Ohio seminary as the Beechers and knew them both, as well as other leading lights of the Abolitionist movement. He was personally a strong Abolitionist all his life, exceeded in his enthusiasm probably only by Salmon P. Chase and Lincoln himself.

Others disagree, but I think IMHO that Lincoln was a strong abolitionist, shown by his letters quoted by David Donald in Lincoln (1999), howbeit that he found it useful not to associate himself with the extreme Abolitionist agitation. He did send money to the Kansas abolitionists, however, with the stipulation that it not be used for weapons or violence.

[lentulusgracchus]

....his choice of a moderate antislavery senator and chief rival for the Rep. nomination, William Seward....

Seward was strongly antislavery and established his reputation for that point of view during the 1840's; he made a remark in the Senate during the debate over the compromise of 1850 about "a higher law than the Constitution" that was quoted widely for years.

After the war, though, he supported the Lincoln/Johnson conciliatory line on "presidential reconstruction" and was criticized by the Radicals.