Martin Meenagh blog

  Abraham Lincoln, for most of his career, was a failed politician. He was a candidate for the Illinois General Assembly in 1832. He lost. He was a candidate for a Whig nomination for the House of Representatives in 1843. He lost. He attempted to become a Commissioner of the General Land Office under President Taylor, which was a bureaucratic role, but was turned down. He was elected to the Illinois legislature in 1854 but did not take his seat, and in 1858, he lost the United States Senate seat for Illinois to Stephen A. Douglas. He was a compromise candidate for President in 1860, won a four-way election, and was promptly discounted and abused across the United States and Confederacy, as well as abroad, until having to create his own party to run for reelection in 1864, which was unexpected.  All Lincoln could really show in terms of elections between 1832 and 1860 was a single term as a member of the House of Representatives in a failing Whig party between 1846 and 1848. ...

‘Reconstruction’ is a passive indicative term referring to several things. It talks to the reconstruction of the relationship between the States which had joined the Confederacy and the Federal Government after the defeat of the Confederacy, and as such can be divided into presidential, congressional, and judicial forms. It also talks to the reconstruction of the relationship between Americans of African descent in the Southern States, white Southerners, and other Americans too. The former point is relatively easy to resolve. One cannot use President Lincoln’s policy whilst the war was ongoing to define whether it succeeded or failed. Lincoln faced two pressures; one, to reconstruct Louisianan government, and secondly, by example and policy, to undermine the Southern will to fight on. As with many Lincoln policies, his ideas on reconstruction were in a state marked by ambiguity and evolution, and he was assassinated before he could pronounce on what he wanted, though he warmly endors...