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Apparently Wisconsin teachers have developed a downloadable course unit on Pomeroy. This is something new for me as well. I assumed the Upper Middle West was solid Republican in those days, but Pomeroy must have had some sort of audience there. Pomeroy went on to have a career in the New York Press and the Greenback Party.

A lot of people have the idea that the Copperheads were the conservatives of their day. That wasn't always true. A lot of old radicals and laborites supported the Democrats, and more or less gave some aid and comfort to the Confederacy. David Goodman Croly, a radical married to an early feminist, accused Lincoln of promoting "race mixing." His son, Herbert, went on to be one of the founders of the liberal New Republic magazine.

[Torie]

Lincoln carried Wisconsin 56%-44% in 1864, and got the same 56% in 1860. His numbers were pulled down I suspect by the substantial numbers of Germans in Wisconsin, particularly German Catholics, the latter of which simply didn't vote GOP at all.