Lincoln Wasn't a Democrat??

I’ve been flabbergasted the last couple of weeks after talking with people I know who watched the movie Lincoln.

The one thing that shocked me the most was how many people assumed that Lincoln was a Democrat since he freed the slaves since everyone “KNOWS” that Democrats are the party that’s the friend of the black man in the U.S. and the Republicans are all bigots and racists.

I wonder how many people buy into the Democrats=non-bigot, Republican=racist meme?

Did you know that Jefferson Davis (President of the Confederacy) was a Democrat? That the Democrats were, as a Party, opposed to the Civil War? That the Republican Party was founded in 1854 by Abolitionists and that Abolition was specifically one of the primary goals of the Republican Party?

Were you aware that almost all of the Southern States were majority Democrat at the time the Civil War began?

Lester Maddox, the staunch segregationist Governor of Georgia, was a Democrat.

George Wallace, the bogey man of racial politics, was a Democrat.

If you do some research you’ll find that the majority of the Southern Segregationist politicians were members of the Democratic Party. It was the Democratic Party that fought tooth and nail from BEFORE the Civil War right up into modern times to prevent abolition, to prevent integration, to maintain the Jim Crow laws.

How did that truth get twisted and turned around to the point that today most people associate the Democratic Party with being supportive of racial equality and the Republicans being racist?

The complete reversal in the minds of the public of the role of the two Parties in racial politics has got to be one of history’s great propaganda victories of all time. I suspect that future generations will study that project as an example of the most effective propaganda efforts ever carried out.

Why the People don’t know this history is almost certainly the consequences of a dumbed down school system. Whether the lack of teaching of these facts is intentional or simply the result of incompetence I can’t say.

The Lighthouse Survival Librarian