He pursued the wiser course of showing that the spirit of the Southern insurrection was hostile to all free labor, and that in its triumph not merely the independence of the laborer but his right of self-defense, as conferred by suffrage, would be imperiled if not destroyed.
Blaine highlights Lincoln's strategy of framing the Southern insurrection as a threat to free labor and suffrage.
Share
More from James Blaine
With whatever strength or prestige the President left Washington, he certainly returned to the Capital personally discredited and politically ruined.
In Congressional districts where the colored race constituted one-half of the total population (and in many instances the proportion was even larger), the vote of one white man offset the vote of two in a Northern district where suffrage…
Many Northern Democrats had indeed given the assurance that if any attempt at coercion should be made by the Republican National Administration, they would themselves meet it with force, and that, if war should come, it would be in the…
He was a lawyer in full practice, a man of the highest integrity, without fear and without reproach.
Other voices in this conversation
