"We have lost our Moses"

In the summer of 2016, "before an overwhelmingly white crowd in Dimondale, Mich., where 2.8 percent of the population is African American," then-candidate trump stumped for black votes, by asking them, "What the hell do you have to lose?"

Apparently that question did not get him African-American votes!  But, his negative campaign against Bill Clinton's crime bills, in order to remind blacks about Hillary, paid off well: "In 2016, black turnout was down eight points from 2012."  He and his political adviser and conduit to the Russians and Wikileaks, roger stone, played the dirtiest politics on their belief that “Hate is a stronger motivator than love ... Human nature has never changed.”

All these are a long, long, long way from Lincoln who believed in "the better angels of our nature."

Not all the people in the South wanted to secede.  Even in Virginia, where there was plenty of opposition to secede in the western part of the state.  Jill Lepore writes that in June, after Lincoln's inauguration earlier in March, "they held their own convention and effectively seceded from the state, to become West Virginia."

Ironically, West Virginia today is confederate flag land with people talking about their heritage and is a solid trump country!

Even the soldiers--North and South---fighting in the Civil War, knew well that the conflict was over one and only one issue: Slavery.  In 1862,  "a soldier writing for his Confederate brigade's newspaper wrote:  "Any man who pretends to believe that this is not a war for the emancipation if the blacks is wither a fool or a liar."

Contrast that with the racists in today's "Party of Lincoln" who falsely claim that the war was about state's rights and not about slavery and emancipation!

Lepore reminds us: "It would become politically expedient, after the war, for ex-Confederates to insist that the Confederacy was founded on states' rights. But the Confederacy was founded on white supremacy."

Think about this the next time you see a confederate flag!

Lincoln issued his emancipation proclamation, shepherded the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment that prohibited slavery in the United States, and ran for re-election.  All "with malice toward none, with charity for all."

On Good Friday of 1865--April 14th--Lincoln was shot.  He died the following morning.