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BREAKING: Lincoln Denounces Republican Tactics

The Republican Party long since ceased to be the "Party of Lincoln," but it would be hard to imagine anything that shows just how far the current Greedy Old Party has moved away from its first president more clearly than what he wrote in this January 11, 1861 letter.
Robert McElvaine
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Historian, writer, feminist and progressive activist

Historian, writer, feminist and progressive activist
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"What is our present condition? We have just carried an election on principles fairly stated to the people. Now we are told in advance, the government shall be broken up, unless we surrender to those we have beaten . . . . In this they are either attempting to play upon us, or they are in dead earnest. Either way, if we surrender, it is the end of us, and of the government. They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. . . . [A]nd they can never have a more shallow pretext for breaking up the government, or extorting a compromise, than now."

A statement today from President Obama or one of the Democratic leaders in Congress? Apart from the use of ad libitum, it certainly sounds like it is, but actually it's from a letter Abraham Lincoln wrote to fellow Republican T.J. Hale on January 11, 1861, between his election and his inauguration.

2013-10-04-Abraham_Lincoln.jpg

The Republican Party long since ceased to be the "Party of Lincoln," but it would be hard to imagine anything that shows just how far the current Greedy Old Party has moved away from its first president more clearly than what he wrote in this letter.

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