Racist Democrats helped elect Abraham Lincoln.

The first known organized public protests against slavery in America date back to 1688. In the 1760s to 1770s, while patriots tried to persuade all thirteen colonies to revolt against British rule, Southern colonies conditioned their participation upon perpetuating slavery. During the 1850s, a divisive issue was whether or not the U.S. would confine "legal" slavery to the States, or whether the US would allow slavery in the Territories as well.

Democratic Presidents Franklin Pierce (1853-57) and James Buchanan (1857-61) were Northerners who favored slavery. (The more p.c.--and more obfuscating--version: "Northerners with sympathies for 'the South.'" Bull poo. Over a century and a half later, "the South" is still on the planet. The sympathies of racist Democratic Presidents Pierce and Buchanan were with unconscionable slave "owners" and therefore with slavery.) Buchanan recommended that Supreme Court Justice Robert Grier vote proslavery (aka, "property rights") in the Scott v. Sandford case of 1857 (aka, the Dred Scott case).

Buchanan's actions were so unpopular that the Republican Party, founded only four years earlier,1 won a majority in the House in 1858. In 1860, Buchanan did not seek re-election. The Democratic Party split into Northern and Southern factions, each running its own Presidential nominee (Stephen A. Douglas and John C. Breckinridge, respectively). Both Democratic nominees, however, opposed Abraham Lincoln's goal of keeping slavery out of the Territories. In addition, a new Constitutional Union Party formed and nominated John Bell for the Presidency.

With his opposition divided, Abraham Lincoln, the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party and perhaps the greatest U.S. President ever, won a majority of electoral votes, without winning the electoral votes of a single Southern state. (A century later, another President who advocated equal rights, a Democrat, would be elected and assassinated, but I digress...maybe.)

The election of 1860 also gave Republicans full control of Congress--the Presidency and both houses of Congress only six years after formal formation of the Republican Party. Republicans went on to win every Presidential election from 1860 until the unique election of 1912, except for two non-consecutive elections won by Democrat Grover Cleveland.

In 1912, the Republican Party itself divided dramatically, resulting in two Republican Presidents running against each other, Teddy Roosevelt and the incumbent Howard Taft, whom TR himself had anointed as his own successor. As a result of that split in the Republican Party, another racist Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, won the Oval Office. Wilson was the first Southerner to win the Presidency since 1848 and the first Democratic Presidential candidate ever to win the Northeast.
____________________________________________________________________________________________
1 Though the time frame in the essay is correct, it may nonetheless be misleading, as far as the chances of a new political party: The Republican Party had organized around a compelling cause that had been represented by abolitionists, both in the US and abroad since the 1600s. In a far more religious time, pastors had long inveighed against slavery from their pulpits. Europeans were also agitating for an end to slavery in America. Even Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's consort, made a speech urging abolition of US slavery. Viewed in context, the "speedy" new party victory took over two centuries and the support of Western Europe.

Eugene V. Debs won 6% of the popular vote in the sea change election of 1912 described in the essay. (I had included here some additional information, specifying that I wasn't sure it was accurate. It wasn't, so I deleted it. However, UltraValia's reply below provides correct info, for which I am very grateful.)

Share
up
0 users have voted.

Comments

ping ponging back and forth between two awful choices since they stole the place from the indigenous people living here.

up
0 users have voted.

"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

thanatokephaloides's picture

@dkmich

So the voters in this country have been ping ponging back and forth between two awful choices since they stole the place from the indigenous people living here.

Actually, a considerable swath of today's voters had nothing to do with "stealing the place" at all. For example: virtually all black Americans had themselves stolen from themselves, and then were kidnapped here and sold as slaves to the same people who really did steal this place from its indigenous inhabitants (i.e., the Anglo-American 0.1%). What castigators of Thomas Jefferson for not liberating his slaves fail to realize that he didn't own those slaves (or anything else) in the free-and-clear. The London banksters really owned them all; Jefferson simply "held and managed" them. George Washington actually owned what he owned, so he could be more generous with manumissions (and was).

Another example applies to me personally: the Irish. Our indigenous places were stolen from us, and then we were force-dumped here -- at our own expense -- again, by the same set of culprits, the Anglo-American 0.1%.

And whose doing is it that Native Americans, Black/African Americans, and Irish Americans (and all other Americans as well) get the "crap or shit" voting selections we get these days? You got it, it's the 0.1%!

All of which explains why we Irish 99%ers have the habit we do of showing up to support the Natives, the Blacks, the Latinos, et al., when they agitate for their rights! After all, it's really all one and the same Cause we're fighting for.

And every March 17, they're all Irish anyway! Smile

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@thanatokephaloides @thanatokephaloides

This is from the Monticello site, which obviously attempts to portray Jefferson in the best light possible. This is excerpted from a page that attempts to come up with reasons why Jefferson did not free his slaves by speculating.

A single paragraph cannot do justice to the issue of Jefferson's failure to free more than a handful of his slaves. Some of the possible reasons include: the economic value of his human property (at certain times, his slaves were mortgaged and thus could not be freed or sold); his lifelong view that emancipation had to go hand-in-hand with expatriation of the freed slaves; his paternalistic belief that slaves were incapable of supporting themselves in freedom and his fear they would become burden to society; his belief in gradual measures operating through the legal processes of government; and, after 1806, a state law that required freed slaves to leave Virginia within a year. Jefferson wrote that this law did not "permit" Virginians to free their slaves; he apparently thought that, for an enslaved African American, slavery was preferable to freedom far from one's home and family.

https://www.monticello.org/site/plantation-and-slavery/property

Reading further on that page shows Jefferson certainly did not hold that all men are created equal. So, on that alone, he was a hypocrite. And as they say, "But wait--there's more.

The site seems to be bending over backwards to excuse Jefferson by speculating about possible excuses. I'm not buying it. Also, even the site's speculation is based on excuses Jefferson himself created. "Gee, you shouldn't free a slave unless you send him or her back to Africa." Even the site, however, doesn't attempt to explain why Jefferson didn't do that, even as to the very few slaves Jefferson did free, one of whom was Sally Hemmings' son.

Some things we know for certain: Jefferson owned hundreds of slaves at times. Slaves were worth a lot. US slaveowners were among the wealthiest people on the planet. Slaves were virtually free labor, which maximized the profits of a plantation. In addition, they waited on the white members of the household hand and foot--cleaning, cooking, minding the children, doing the laundry--whatever was required for the slaveowner to live a luxurious life.

Jefferson was a big spender who did not stint on himself, even if he had to borrow. His investment in his many slaves had to have been huge. I don't think he wanted to take an economic hit by freeing his slaves--or by paying them. Either of those courses would have required quite severe downward modification of the lifestyle he clearly enjoyed and diminution of the estate he could leave his white children. And perhaps even cleaning out his own chamber pot.

A few more things are certain: Jefferson did not mortgage his slaves at gunpoint. He did so voluntarily, so he could borrow money to support the lifestyle he enjoyed. Also, his slaves were not always mortgaged. So, there were times when he could have freed them, but he never did.

Jefferson was obviously not only literate, but erudite. Yet we have no statement from him, either written by him or quoted by others in their writings to explain why he did not free his slaves, only speculation and rationalizations. I see that, too, as telling.

up
0 users have voted.
thanatokephaloides's picture

@HenryAWallace

Jefferson was obviously not only literate, but erudite. Yet we have no statement from him, either written by him or quoted by others in their writings to explain why he did not free his slaves, only speculation and rationalizations. I see that, too, as telling.

I actually don't dispute anything you said in this whole Comment. However, I do doubt the Monticello site's estimation of Jefferson's financial acumen. My understanding is that at his death (when it was easiest for Virginians to emancipate slaves due to quirks in State law) Jefferson was essentially bankrupt, owing several times his whole net worth.

And again, you're right: the fact that we have no statement from him as to why he didn't free his slaves as Washington freed his is telling indeed. He certainly could have done so if he had wanted to.

up
0 users have voted.

"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar

"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides

@thanatokephaloides

beyond Sally Hemmings know that he was a spender who lived beyond his means. I don't know that the site says otherwise.

up
0 users have voted.

@dkmich

been relatively good choices. Given that all humans are mixed bags, none of our Presidents has been perfect. And, I do believe that power corrupts. However, some of our Presidents have been considerably better than others, Abraham Lincoln certainly being one of the best, if not the best.

Also, when Americans did have third, fourth, fifth and sixth choices, they still stuck, after 1858, to Republicans or Democrats. For example, in the year Wilson won by default, Eugene Debs ran. However, the government and media had already put a lot of time and energy into discrediting ssssossshialissstsss. A very few years later, they would do the same to Communisssstsssss.

BTW, according to DNA research, the Kalahari Bushmen from the southern tip of Africa are the only indigenous people. Their migrations account for the rest of the world being populated, including the Middle East, Australia (even the aboriginal people), and our hemisphere. We are all descended from them.

The first occupants of our continent supposedly got here from Russia and settled from Alaska to South America, accounting for everyone from "Eskimos" to our First Nations, to the Maya and Inca of Mexico and South America. They just migrated to this hemisphere many millennia before the West Europeans.

PBS aired an absorbing several part series about this narrated by this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Wells

up
0 users have voted.

bothered me. I thought I remembered someone beating that because I voted for them.

An independent presidential candidate in 1992, he received 18.9% of the popular vote, the highest percentage for an independent or third-party candidate since 1912. In 1996, he was the Reform Party's presidential nominee and received 8.4% of the popular vote.

Ross Perot

Also, while he didn't get any electoral college votes others from third parties have won them.

Unlike Perot, however, some other third party candidates since Roosevelt have won electoral college votes. (Robert La Follette had 13 in 1924, Strom Thurmond had 39 in 1948, George Wallace had 46 in 1968 and John Hospers won one in 1972, albeit from a faithless elector).

Both of the quotes above are from Wikipedia. There is no direct link to them. The closest I could get is this link about his Reform Party run. You can scroll up a little from there to see the quotes in the second to last paragraph of the previous section.

R Perot Electoral History

up
0 users have voted.

Yaldabaoth, Saklas I'm calling you. Samael. You're not alone. I said, you're not alone, in your darkness. You're not alone, baby. You're not alone. "Original Sinsuality" Tori Amos

@Dark UltraValia

Thurmond or Wallace? I've even posted about each of those elections on one board or another at one time or another.

Even though I did emphasize that I wasn't sure, I should have checked before posting or just omitted that bit.

I will revise the OP because I hate leaving disinformation on the board that might lead someone astray if he or she doesn't read further. The corrected essay will credit you, though. Thanks again. (And it's never too late.) My deepest apologies to all who read caucus99percent.

The point was not to take too much encouragement about a new grass roots party uncritically from the amazing success of the Republican Party in 1860 and afterward. That point stands. I hoped Perot, as a billionaire willing to finance his own campaign in full, including buying infommercial time, was an anomaly. However, then Trump ran amid rumors of a possible challenge by billionaires Bloomberg and Mark Cuban. And who knows what other billionaires might do (Gates, Soros, etc.)? Ugh.

up
0 users have voted.