Excellent point, but don't forget to include racial quotas and anchor baby automatic citizenship as dependent upon the 14th Amendment.
So, by cellmate's "logic" the modern Republican Party is responsible for most of today's disasters.
The 19th Century social engineers using their "Washington knows best" attitude forced a "fundamental transformation" of America. Of course they immediately lost interest, leaving the 14th Amendment to fester until their latter day statist offspring rediscovered it.
Cellmate also fails to appreciate the almost total reversal of party labeling. Lincoln won 17 states in 1860. In 2000, GW Bush only won one of those states (NH) - that's about a 94% turnaround. Cellmate must be really perplexed by the Ford Thunderbird's rebranding - it's a two seater. No, wait, it's a four seater. Hold on, it's a two seater again.
If we are going to apply cellmate's "principle" as to party responsibility - here's two that never get examined.
1. The economic plight of blacks today can in part be attributed to the slow recovery of the South after the Civil War. It took almost 50 years for Southern per capita income to match 1860 levels. That recovery was hindered by insufficient capital to rebuild. Where did that capital go - in part, to federal subsidies for overbuilding of railroads and the corruption that accompanied it. Tight money to repay the war debt and accompanying overly strict banking regulations starved all rural areas of cash needed to efficiently transact business.
2. Union veterans pension vote buying program. This was and is the largest welfare program ever developed and provided the intellectual basis for social security. Unwilling to be satisfied with pension levels granted after previous wars, northern politicians continually expanded the program and invited massive fraud. By the 1890s, CW pensions accounted for more than 40% of federal spending.
Finally, Mr. Morally Superior got twin benefits from slavery:
1. Plantation raised cotton provided the foreign exchange that built industrial America. The financial markets, insurance, and shipping were all ready to go when manufacturing needed them in the late 19th Century. The development of management techniques and scientific/technological advances growing out of the early- to mid-19th Century textile industry would not have been ready without cotton.
2. The South accepted defeat and overwhelming percentages became loyal Americans again. What could have become the Balkans instead became the most patriotic part of the country, setting the stage for the American Century. The Great Reconciliation required a tiny bit of ambiguity - each side allowed the other side to have their heroes and their symbols.
Having garnered the benefits at zero cost to themselves, cellmate, Sharpton, Obama, Haley, Romney and a cast of thousands now blithely engage in selective history - and in so doing display a nasty streak.
The May 2000 compromise to move the flag to its present location gets totally overlooked today. At the time, I doubted the leftists' ability to live by a solemn agreement (and I was proven right), but was nevertheless hopeful that people of good will on both sides would build on the example (wrong).
Instead I have been reminded of pre-Civil War compromises that the statists immediately denounced in their rush to the next political opportunity. And I was further reminded of Israeli-Palestinian "land for peace" deals. It never works out when the sincere party gives up something tangible (Gaza, California statehood) for a promise from insincere parties (a halt to terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens, enforcement of the fugitve slave laws).
If you were looking for a patriotic American, where would you look: a Confederate veteran in 1890 - or a community organizer from today?
In fact, most of the states Lincoln won in 1860 had often previously voted for Southern Democrat presidents, and often again voted for Democrats in years following the Civil War.
But 1860 was what we today call a "wave election", where the vast majority of Northerners suddenly awoke to the fact that the Southern dominated Federal Government was getting ready to impose slavery on western territories that didn't want it, and potentially even on their own states via the Supreme Court's Dred-Scott decision.
After the Civil War national voting patterns settled back to what they had been before: the Solid South allied with Northern big city immigrant voters.
This alliance won important elections in 1912, 1932, 1960 and led to today's welfare state as we know it.
The 1960s changed everything, especially 1964 when the Solid South first voted for a conservative, Mr. Conservative, Barry Goldwater, and Democrats took every other state, giving us President Johnson's "Great Society".
Today Dems have lost the conservative South, but they've gained even stronger holds on their traditional big city immigrant and other minority (especially blacks) voters.
Bottom line: in 1860 Lincoln's conservative party was based in rural and small town America, while Democrats were based on southern privilege-seekers and northern immigrants, just as they are, somewhat morphed, today.
Replacing the old Southern slave-holders we have today's huge "governing class" and liberal elites, but otherwise, pretty much the same idea.