Broken Eggs Cannot Be Mended

"The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. And there is no going back to the Union as it was. If Democrats hope to lead the nation to any kind of recovery, much less renewal, they must understand and internalize this fact of the matter."

Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times argues that "Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction—for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought—not for restoration of what was."

"Made It Express 'Timeless, Universally Binding Norms'"

"Once the Declaration had been issued, perceptions began to change. Black Americans were among the first to change them, notably the New England-based clergyman Lemuel Haynes. Soon after July 4, Haynes wrote 'Liberty Further Extended: Or Free Thoughts on the Illegality of Slave-Keeping,' an essay not published until 1983 but seen as reflecting the feelings of many in the Black community, with its call to 'affirm, that Even an affrican, has Equally as good a right to his Liberty in common with Englishmen.'"

Hillel Itelie at Associated Press discusses "[t]he long, ongoing debate over 'All men are created equal.'"

"Making This Promise Real Has Been the Work of Generations"

"The new birth of freedom that Abraham Lincoln extolled in the Gettysburg Address required the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, which amounted to a second founding. It was this second founding that made the first founding worthy of being saved. Much like the founders before them, those who ushered in a second founding learned from experience, working to improve an imperfect Constitution.  At Gettysburg, Lincoln cast the nation as 'conceived in liberty' and 'dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal.' Lincoln's effort was to complete the 'unfinished work' of the founding generation. If Lincoln cast this 'unfinished work' as an effort to restore America to its foundations, to a nation dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal, this was an effort to return to something real, but that never actually existed—only the promise of it did."

George Thomas at The Bulwark discusses "America's Imperfect Founding."

"I Would Rather Be Assassinated on This Spot Than to Surrender It"

"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence. (Great cheering.) I have often pondered over the dangers which were incurred by the men who assembled here and adopted that Declaration of Independence–I have pondered over the toils that were endured by the officers and soldiers of the army, who achieved that Independence. (Applause.) I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. (Great applause.) It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance. (Cheers.) This is the sentiment embodied in that Declaration of Independence."

Teaching American History has Abraham Lincoln's Speech from Independence Hall from February 22, 1861.

"We Are Still Catching Up to Him"

"Ultimately, however, these horrific murders and Johnson's blatant racism strengthened Stevens's hand, for they showed that nothing less than full and thorough revolution in the South would prevent that status quo antebellum from taking hold again. By 1867, when some Republicans had already started to lose interest in the whole project, Stevens told them pointedly that 'radicalism is the only thing now that will save and rescue us.' Levine charts the pivotal role Stevens played in helping to draft and pass the 14th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act of 1866, the Military Reconstruction Act of 1867, and other important measures of early Reconstruction. The novelty and import of these measures can hardly be overstated. As Eric Foner showed in his recent book The Second Founding, they were the first to give the federal government new powers—to protect the rights and liberties of its citizens—rather than take them away."

Richard Kreitner at The Baffler reviews Bruce Levine's Thaddeus Stevens: Civil War Revolutionary, Fighter for Racial Justice.

"It Is Baked into Every Apple Pie, and It Lurks Beneath Purple Mountains' Majesty"

"The line between cooperation and conspiracy, between politicking and plotting, is necessarily subjective. But episodically throughout American history, in every century from the 17th to the 21st, some considerable share of Americans has fallen under the spell of a fantastical, fevered vision of conspiracy, usually with occult and Satanic elements. Most often, these conspiracy theories are politically oriented, but sometimes they pop up outside of politics, as in the Salem witch trials of the 1690s, the Satanic-day-care-abuse panic of the 1990s, and the Satanism panic touching rock music and role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons that immediately preceded that fiasco, echoes of which can still be heard in dark whisperings that the Harry Potter franchise is a Luciferian propaganda project. Richard Hofstadter famously called the associated political tendency 'the paranoid style in American politics,' tracing its history back to the Illuminati panic that gripped the New England clergy in the 18th century. Hofstadter makes an important and often underappreciated point: Conspiracy theories attract lunatics, but their relevance extends far beyond the bughouse."

Kevin D. Williamson at National Review explains "Why Americans Adore Conspiracy Theories."

And Greg Miller at Knowable Magazine writes about "a new type of 'conspiracy without theory' that relies on sheer assertion and repetition rather than evidence and reason."

"This Is the Largest Mass Execution in US History. It Was Also the Largest Act of Executive Clemency in US History"

"If he had been guided by short-term political calculations, Lincoln would have had every reason to simply allow the military tribunal’s order to execute all 303 Dakota men to take place. Lincoln was aware of the backwardness and racism that existed toward Native Americans, just as he was of racism toward blacks. Yet he did not make concessions to these tendencies, even within his own party. Lincoln's larger strategy involved elevating the consciousness of the population. His aim throughout the war was to tactfully mitigate the powerful racist tendencies that did exist and that were an objective block on his war policies."

Renae Cassimeda at the World Socialist Web Site tells the story of Abraham Lincoln and "the Dakota 38."

"Anti-Lincoln Obsession"

"The great stumbling-block issue for the Guardian and many other liberals was the right to self-determination. The paper believed that the south had the right to secede and to establish an independent state. It suspected that it would succeed. It thought, as Gladstone did, that this might hasten the end of slavery–and it may have been right, since no slave society, including Cuba and Brazil, survived into the 20th century. Above all, though, the paper wanted to be consistent. It had supported independence for the Slavs, the Hungarians, the Italians and the Egyptians–so why not for the Confederates, too?"

In a 2011 article, Martin Kettle reviews the positions taken in The Guardian during the U.S. Civil War.

"To Obey the Law While Respecting Themselves"

"In that sense, Lincoln was the embodiment of America's long struggle to remake itself as a morally coherent nation. Under his leadership, the Civil War finally resolved the problem of fugitive slaves by destroying the institution from which they had fled. By the time of his death, some 4 million black Americans were no longer at risk of forcible return to their erstwhile masters. They had entered the limbo between the privations of their past and the future promise of American life—a state of suspension in which millions of black Americans still live."

Andrew Delbanco at The Atlantic connects the 1850s to today.

"Often Had the United States on His Mind"

"To read Marx is to wrestle with the modern world that capitalism has made. This includes modern America—especially modern America. Because the US is the nation in world history most committed to capitalism, and because Marx is the world's most enduring theorist of capitalism, Marx is a veritable American alter ego."

Andrew Hartman at Jacobin marks Karl Marx's bicentennial

As does The Economist.

"How Much Has Been Gained and How Much Further There Is to Go"

"As Abraham Lincoln noted after the 1857 Dred Scott decision, which declared persons of African descent had 'no rights which the white man was bound to respect,' some of those 'Africans' had voted in the elections to ratify the Constitution. Lincoln went on to list five states—New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and North Carolina—where black men voted at the country’s founding. Later historians would add three more states.
"Lincoln was outraged that the Supreme Court would strip citizenship from men who had been voting for generations, and he wasn't alone."

Van Gosse in a 2015 Boston Globe article discusses the history of black voting rights.

"The Colored Side of Lincolniana"

"Working many decades after Herndon, Washington had a harder time obtaining first person interviews. He exploited archival sources whenever possible. He also turned to his own recollections of stories told by his grandmothers’ friends, whom he had known as a child growing up near Ford's Theatre. He interviewed very elderly people who recalled the Civil War era, and he spoke to descendants of that generation, soliciting their memories of relatives and friends.
"Washington figured such interviews had value despite how much time had passed, and historians have largely agreed. Many of the vignettes he recorded must be used with caution because they are the products of people's memories, stories told many years after the events themselves. Yet Washington's accounts of African American employees in Lincoln's White House, in particular, have become indispensable to historians because there is virtually no other documentation of those employees' lives."

Kate Masur at History News Network writes about the 1942 book They Knew Lincoln.

"We're Not Good Because We're Old, We're Old Because We're Good."

"An entrepreneur credited with introducing the ready-to-wear suit to the American market, Mr. Brooks also laid the groundwork for innovations—sack suits, navy blazers, reverse-striped rep ties, button-down shirts, patchwork madras, seersucker suits—now so familiar we tend to forget they were ever new. 'He was a disrupter and influencer,' Mr. Del Vecchio said of Mr. Brooks. 'And we're ready to start the disruption again.'"

Guy Trebay at The New York Times discusses the bicentennial of Brooks Brothers.

And Matthew Walther at The Week praises the company.

"One Is Struck by the Continuing Relevance of His Writings"

"As for the future, Foner denounces the divisive politics of Donald Trump, but he also laments the failure of Barack Obama to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the Great Recession of 2008 to make fundamental changes in the nature of American capitalism. While disappointed with Obama as a mainstream Democrat who refused to challenge established corporate and banking interests, Foner sees promise in the 2016 Presidential campaign of democratic socialist Bernie Sanders, observing that the type of fundamental change advanced by the Senator from Vermont is evidence of how American radicalism and a usable past have persisted into the present day. In discussing his teaching of a class on the radical tradition in America, Foner cautions that the key is to emphasize movements to promote social change and freedom rather than to concentrate upon individuals. Foner has retired from Columbia University, but let us hope that we will continue to benefit from his observations as a public intellectual in the pages of the Nation and other influential publications."

Ron Briley at History News Network reviews Eric Foner's Battles for Freedom: The Use and Abuse of American History.

"And That's a Problem"

"The language we turn to in describing the war, from speaking of compromise and plantations, to characterizing the struggle as the North versus the South, or referring to Robert E. Lee as a General, can lend legitimacy to the violent, hateful and treasonous southern rebellion that tore the nation apart from 1861 to 1865; and from which we still have not recovered. Why do we often describe the struggle as between two equal entities? Why have we shown acceptance of the military rank given by an illegitimate rebellion and unrecognized political entity?"

Christopher Wilson at Smithsonian argues that "We Legitimize the 'So-Called' Confederacy With Our Vocabulary."

"Unable to Advance a Coherent (or Even Accurate) Narrative"

"On the surface, this is almost interesting—the kind of reference that makes its wielder seem erudite. The 'American system' was a program for the development of the nation's infrastructure (financed by high tariffs for selected industries and sustained by a national bank), a project of the Whig Party and its leaders, like Kentucky's Henry Clay. Abraham Lincoln was an admirer of this system and promoted key elements as president. And one could say that the Roosevelts, or at least Franklin Roosevelt, were pioneers of a second American system, whose ideas were contiguous with the first. But that's where the actual history ends."

At Slate, Jamelle Bouie criticizes Steve Bannon's view of the nineteenth century.

"Trump Administration Announces New $20 Bill Design Honoring Harriet Tubman's Owners"

"Mnuchin then sought to assuage any concerns about the decision, assuring those in attendance that the Trump White House was already looking into ways to preserve Andrew Jackson's likeness by having it replace Abraham Lincoln on the $5 bill."

From The Onion.

"Protection of Slavery From the Perceived Threat to Its Long-Term Survival Posed by Lincoln’s Election in 1860 Was, in Fact, the Dominant Theme in Secessionist Rhetoric"

"As Gary Gallagher notes in his introduction to The Myth of the Lost Cause, 'White Southerners emerged from the Civil War thoroughly beaten but largely unrepentant.' Some proponents of the Lost Cause remained candid about the racial ideology that sustained the Confederacy. The unrepentant Edward Pollard, wartime editor of the Richmond Examiner, wrote the first history of the Confederacy, with the appropriate title The Lost Cause. The war had ended slavery, Pollard acknowledged, but it 'did not decide negro equality…. This new cause—or rather the true question of the war revived—is the supremacy of the white race.'¹⁷ In a speech to Confederate veterans in 1890, a former captain in the 7th Georgia Volunteer Infantry echoed Pollard: 'We fought for the supremacy of the white race in America.'"

In a 2001 New York Review of Books article, James M. McPherson looks at publications concerning the cause of the Civil War.

"The First Victim of American Imperialism"

"Many important figures of the epoch, with shame and regret, recognized its nature. That 'most outrageous war' (John Quincy Adams wrote) had been 'actuated by a spirit of rapacity and an inordinate desire for territorial aggrandizement' (Henry Clay), and began with a premeditated attack by President James Polk, thanks to which 'a band of murderers and demons from hell' were 'permitted to kill men, women and children' (Abraham Lincoln).

"After the naval bombardment of the civilian population of Veracruz, Robert E. Lee wrote to his wife, 'My heart bleeds for the inhabitants.' In his memoirs, Ulysses S. Grant lamented that he had not had "the moral courage to resign' from what, as a young officer, he had described as 'the most wicked war.' For a number of other politicians and thinkers, including Henry David Thoreau, the war contradicted the democratic and republican values on which the country had been founded and was opposed to basic Christian ethics."

Enrique Krauze at The New York Times writes about an effort to invalidate the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

"The Bile Poured on Him from Every Quarter Makes Today's Internet Vitriol Seem Dainty"

"This process of distillation obscures how Lincoln was perceived in his own time, and, by comparison, it diminishes our own age. Where is the political giant of our era? Where is the timeless oratory? Where is the bold resolve, the moral courage, the vision?
"Imagine all those critical voices from the 19th century as talking heads on cable television. Imagine the snap judgments, the slurs and put-downs that beset Lincoln magnified a million times over on social media. How many of us, in that din, would hear him clearly? His story illustrates that even greatness—let alone humbler qualities like skill, decency, good judgment, and courage—rarely goes unpunished."

Mark Bowden in a 2013 Atlantic article explores Northern criticism of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.