Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 20 Politics, Race, and the Culture Wars Part 1

Abraham Lincoln in his Times Chapter 20 Politics, Race, and the Culture Wars Part 1

uddenly the master politician stopped politicking—party politicking on the stump, that is. During the Civil War, Lincoln avoided the kind of pointed political argumentation that had previously been his forte. From his slasher-gaff attacks on opponents in the Illinois legislature through his anti-Polk diatribes in the US Congress to his brilliant debates with Stephen Douglas in the 1850s, he had proved himself a virtuoso party politician. During the war, however, his overt jousting with political opponents on the hustings ceased. As Mark E. Neely Jr. notes, a reason the Republicans fared poorly in the 1862 midterms was Lincoln’s failure that year to enter the political fray. 1 Why did he not campaign as a Republican partisan? Actually, he  did  campaign, but he did so indirectly, through proclamations, public letters, and, especially, through his leadership of the increasingly antislavery war. To assault his political enemies head on through party-driven speeches would have damaged his goa…