Question of the Week: 11/1-11/7/21
It’s election season…so if you lived in the 1860’s, what candidate (any political office) would you have liked enough to go out and campaign for?
It’s election season…so if you lived in the 1860’s, what candidate (any political office) would you have liked enough to go out and campaign for?
John Breckinridge of Kentucky. Because the Breckinridge/ Lane ticket (Southern Democrat, although Joseph Lane was from Oregon) was the only option available during the Presidential Election of 1860 that had a viable likelihood of avoiding civil war. Of course, the inconvenient truth of slavery would have remained and festered: a moral dilemma to be addressed at a later date. (And with luck, the additional time gained may have been enough to formulate a workable – and peaceful – solution.)
Lincoln
Giant, you asked me in recent post about Guelzo’s bio of Lee … i am about half-way through — pretty good so far … he’s neither the traitorous villian of today’s commentators nor the Holiest of Holy Saints of the Lost Causers … instead, he’s just a devoted family man and talented solider of his time who devoted his adult life to the nation and an Army that provided him security and headaches … also a man of very conflicted loyalty when the CW came … i recommend it.
Thank you Mark!!
The Abraham Lincoln/Hannibal Hamlin ticket … less so Lincoln and Johnson in ’64
Well, as a military person i couldn’t campaign (for elections anyway) … i only got to vote … so, of course i would have voted for my Commander in Chief — along with most of fellows in the AOP! Let’s get this war overwith and get back home.
Lincoln or Grant
Lincoln. However if the question were changed slightly to who I would want to be with during the campaign season, I would say Lincoln through the end of September 1860, and then Douglass as he campaigns throughout the South in support of the Union.
Lincoln. Providence was very kind to us.
“For Lincoln & Liberty Too!”
The CSA didn’t have time for anyone to campaign, but I would have liked to attend the first session of the Provisional Congress of the Confederate States of America to see how Jefferson Davis, and Alexander Stephens were elected President and VP. Can’t remember where I read it, but as I recall Howell Cobb was really the favorite to lead the Confederacy, and Robert Toombs had quite a rivalry to be the VP with is good friend and fellow Georgian .