Abraham Lincoln

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  5/24/2023
  

  Does Lincoln Hold the Key to the Debt Ceiling Crisis?

  by Roger Lowenstein

  Issuing "greenback" paper currency backed by the government's credit instead of gold was seen as a radical move in 1862, but Lincoln and Treasury Secretary Salmon Chase recognized the paramount importance of safeguarding the nation's credit and did it anyway. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  12/21/2022
  

  Was the Civil War Inevitable?

  by David W. Blight

  As a growing number of Americans entertain the idea that dissolving the nation might be better than holding its incompatible parts together, it's worth revisiting the series of decisions that led to the Civil War, and to ask whether the nation has, or will, experience the equivalent of the Dred Scott decision. 

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• 10/16/2022
  

  Now More than Ever, America Must Commit to Ensure the Transition of Presidential Power

  by David Marchick and Valerie Smith Boyd

  The latest evidence presented by the January 6 Commission underscore the urgent need for all parties to renew the commitment the core principle of an orderly transition of power from one elected president to another.

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• 10/9/2022
  

  Lincoln Would have Had an Answer for the "Originalists"

  by Richard Striner

  The 16th President looked to the constitutional crises of his time and asked whether the document was created to serve the people or the other way around. Today he might ask the same of the Supreme Court. 

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• SOURCE: Substack
  8/28/2022
  

  The Democrats, Not the "Party of Lincoln," are the Best Hope to Protect Abe's Legacy

  by Eli Merritt

  Abraham Lincoln went to Washington as president-elect animated by the commitments to justice and liberty defined in the first Republican Party convention. If the Republicans won't honor these commitments, the Democrats must do it. 

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• SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
  7/21/2022
  

  The Dangerous Misunderstanding of America's History of Mob Action

  by Stefan Lund

  Contrary to the protestations of January 6th apologists, mob action in America has usually worked to suppress, rather than defend, democracy.

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• 6/19/2022
  

  "Oh, We Knowed What Was Goin’ On": The Myths (and Lies) of Juneteenth

  by Clyde W. Ford

  After the myths of Juneteenth are stripped away, the day symbolizes the incompleteness of the promise of emancipation. 

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• 3/6/2022
  

  How Lincoln and Douglass Joined Forces for Freedom

  by Jonathan W. White

  Lincoln's discussions with Frederick Douglass should make clear the difference between the president's public statements and his inner convictions on emancipation. 

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• SOURCE: The Bulwark
  2/21/2022
  

  Spielberg was the Director Lincoln Deserved

  The director, with writer Tony Kushner and star Daniel Day-Lewis, nailed the idea of Lincoln as an imperfect leader nevertheless "fitted to the times we were born into," in a film that holds up after ten years.

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• 11/14/2021
  

  Look to Lincoln's Interactions with Black Americans to Understand His Racial Attitudes

  by Michael Burlingame

  As Lincoln's personal racial views have come under scrutiny, a biographer says that the prominent and ordinary Black Americans the 16th president dealt with didn't have the doubts today's activists do about where Lincoln stood. 

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• SOURCE: Points: Blog of the Alcohol & Drugs History Society and the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy
  8/31/2021
  

  The Lincoln Family and Pennyroyal: Re-Evaluating Medicines in the Archive and Beyond

  by Emma Verstraete

  An examination of Abraham Lincoln's family purchases of medicinal herbs highlights the need to use the lens of oral history and folk knowledge to interpret sources. 

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• SOURCE: Heather Cox Richardson
  4/7/2021
  

  April 6, 2021: On the Republican Party

  by Heather Cox Richardson

  Since the time of Lincoln, the Republican Party has been part of a bipartisan understanding that expanding the nation's infrastructure – meaning investing in all sorts of supports to economic and social activity – has been a boon to prosperity. That commitment is fraying today. 

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• SOURCE: Civil War Memory
  3/8/2021
  

  The Problem With CNN’s Lincoln Documentary

  by Kevin M. Levin

  In a brief review, history educator and civil war scholar Kevin M. Levin says CNN's latest Lincoln documentary doesn't use the knowledge of a great roster of historians to full advantage. 

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• SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
  2/22/2021
  

  Take Down Chicago’s Lincoln Statues? It’s Iconoclasm Gone Mad

  by Sidney Blumenthal and Harold Holzer

  Two biographers of Lincoln question the Chicago Monuments Project, which has placed famous statues of the 16th president on a list of public memorials subject to possible removal.

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• 2/14/2021
  

  Lincoln and the Lesson of Leading From Behind

  by Michael J. Gerhardt

  Joe Biden's inaugural address signals his willingness to follow Abraham Lincoln in "leading from behind" by listening and lifting the voices of others. 

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• SOURCE: TIME
  2/11/2021
  

  Politicians Quote Abraham Lincoln a Lot. Historians Say They Don't Always Do His Words Justice

  by Olivia B. Waxman

  Kate Masur, Eric Foner, Manisha Sinha, Nina Silber and Thavolia Glymph describe the selective and deceptive quotings of Lincoln that have sprung up in this political climate and suggest some futher reading. 

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• SOURCE: New York Daily News
  2/5/2021
  

  What Lincoln Understood About Unity

  by Harold Holzer

  "The fact is, even the most eloquent calls for harmony seldom repair a house divided — not without the accompaniment of painful but unavoidable choices about national policy and purpose."

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• 1/24/2021
  

  "Hands Off Until He Was Safe Over": David Reynolds Urges Biden to Look to Lincoln

  by James Thornton Harris

  Historian David S. Reynolds recently published Abe: Abraham Lincoln and his Times, a cultural biography that shows how the 16th president was shaped by the many social currents swirling in the young United States.

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• 1/19/2021
  

  Biden Isn't the First President to Have to Change Tracks en Route to Inauguration

  by Jeff Rogg

  The threat of violence forced Joe Biden to cancel plans to travel from Wilmington to Washington by Amtrak, as he famously did during his Senate years. The decision recalls Lincoln's efforts to avoid the (possibly apocryphal) Baltimore Plot. 

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  1/12/2021
  

  Review: Was the Constitution a Pro-Slavery Document?

  by Gordon S. Wood

  Gordon Wood says James Oakes's new book examines the dialectical relationship between 19th century interpretations of the Constitution as a pro-slavery and anti-slavery document and argues that that debate steered Lincoln toward a commitment to racial equality as inextricable from abolition.