I want hair like Lincoln

Today I read chapter two. This book is more of an in-depth analysis of the political environment in which Lincoln worked. It is great to see this backdrop as opposed to simply getting dates and facts from Lincoln's life and having to draw connections ourselves...as if the average reader ever does.

I was amused today to see Carwardine use the word "evangelical" in context of the 19th century. Then I looked in the front of the book and noticed his other two books are entitled Evangelicals and Politics in Antebellum America and Transatlantic Revivalism: Popular Evangelicalism in Britain and America, 1790-1865 . I suppose he's a bit of an expert.

This chapter dealt specifically with 1854-1858 when the Whig party ceased to exist and the Republican party was born. Some of the standards the Republican party stood for: restoration of the Missouri Compromise, upholding Fugitive Slave Law, noninterference with existing slave States, extolling religious toleration, and opposing public funding for parochial Catholic schools.

This time period also saw the foundation of a new party: the Know Nothings. How's that for a party name?! Carwardine jokes on their potential rewrite of the Declaration of Independence to read "All men are created equal, except for negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics."

As far as the Democratic party goes, this is what he had to say regarding their view of slavery.

In practice their party silenced them by asserting the unfitness of time and place, whatever the circumstances. "You must not say anything about it in the free states, because it is not there. You must not say anything about it in the slave states, because it is there. You must not say anything about it in the pulpit, because that is religion and has nothing to do with it. You must not say anything about it in politics, because that will disturb the security of 'my place.'"