Sunday, December 14, 2025

History Minute (052): Abolitionists steadily pressured Lincoln.

Quoting Zinn:

It was only as the war grew more bitter, the casualties mounted, desperation to win heightened, and the criticism of the abolitionists threatened to unravel the tattered coalition behind Lincoln that he began to act against slavery. Hofstadter puts it this way: "Like a delicate barometer, he recorded the trend of pressures, and as the Radical pressure increased he moved toward the left." Wendell Phillips said that if Lincoln was able to grow "it is because we have watered him."

Excerpt From
A People's History of the United States
Howard Zinn
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