Letters from an American February 11, 2026 Heather Cox Richardson Feb 11, 2026
On February 12, 1809, Nancy Hanks Lincoln gave birth to her second child, a son: Abraham.
Abraham Lincoln grew up to become the nation’s sixteenth president, leading the country from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865, a little over a month into his second term. He piloted the country through the Civil War, preserving the concept of American democracy. It was a system that had never been fully realized but that he still saw as “the last, best hope of earth” to prove that people could govern themselves.
“Four score and seven years ago,” he told an audience at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, “our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”
Lincoln dated the founding of the nation from the Declaration of Independence rather than the Constitution, the document enslavers preferred because of that document’s protection of property. In the Declaration, the Founders wrote that they held certain “truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….”
But in Lincoln’s day, fabulously wealthy enslavers had gained control over the government and had begun to argue that the Founders had gotten their worldview terribly wrong. They insisted that their system of human enslavement, which had enabled them to amass fortunes previously unimaginable, was the right one. Most men were dull drudges who must be led by their betters for their own good, southern leaders said. As South Carolina senator and enslaver James Henry Hammond put it, “I repudiate, as ridiculously absurd, that much-lauded but nowhere accredited dogma of Mr. Jefferson, that ‘all men are born equal.’”
In 1858, Abraham Lincoln, then a candidate for the Senate, warned that arguments limiting American equality to white men were the same arguments “that kings have made for enslaving the people in all ages of the world…. Turn in whatever way you will—whether it come from the mouth of a King, an excuse for enslaving the people of his country, or from the mouth of men of one race as a reason for enslaving the men of another race, it is all the same old serpent.” Either people—men, in his day—were equal, or they were not. Lincoln went on, “I should like to know if taking this old Declaration of Independence, which declares that all men are equal upon principle and making exceptions to it…where will it stop?”
Lincoln had thought deeply about the logic of equality. In his 1860 campaign biography, he permitted the biographer to identify six books that had influenced him. One was a book published in 1817 and wildly popular in the Midwest in the 1830s: Capt. Riley’s Narrative. The book was written by James Riley, and the full title of the book was “An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815, With the Sufferings of Her Surviving Officers and Crew, Who Were Enslaved by the Wandering Arabs on the Great African Desart [sic], or Zahahrah.” The story was exactly what the title indicated: the tale of white men enslaved in Africa.
In the 1850s, on a fragment of paper, Lincoln figured out the logic of a world that permitted the law to sort people into different places in a hierarchy, applying the reasoning he heard around him. “If A. can prove, however conclusively, that he may, of right, enslave B.—why may not B. snatch the same argument, and prove equally, that he may enslave A?” Lincoln wrote. “You say A. is white, and B. is black. It is color, then; the lighter, having the right to enslave the darker? Take care. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with a fairer skin than your own. You do not mean color exactly?—You mean the whites are intellectually the superiors of the blacks, and, therefore have the right to enslave them? Take care again. By this rule, you are to be slave to the first man you meet, with an intellect superior to your own. But, say you, it is a question of interest; and, if you can make it your interest, you have the right to enslave another. Very well. And if he can make it his interest, he has the right to enslave you.”
Lincoln saw clearly that if we give up the principle of equality before the law, we have given up the whole game. We have admitted the principle that people are unequal and that some people are better than others. Once we have replaced the principle of equality with the idea that humans are unequal, we have granted approval to the idea of rulers and ruled. At that point, all any of us can do is to hope that no one in power decides that we belong in one of the lesser groups.
In 1863, Lincoln reminded his audience at Gettysburg that the Founders had created a nation “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” but it was no longer clear whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.” During the Civil War, the people of the United States were defending that principle against those who were trying to create a new nation based, as the Confederacy’s vice president Alexander Stephens said, “upon the great truth” that men were not, in fact, created equal, that the “great physical, philosophical, and moral truth” was that there was a “superior race.”
In the midst of the Civil War, Lincoln called for Americans to understand what was at stake, and to “highly resolve…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” ChristopherBlackwell
Perhaps that was the mistake… because “God” cannot be wrong, and thus there is no room for argument or compromise.
So if there is only “one God” and thus only one right way and only one right church, Bible, interpretation, and only one right party… the party that claims to be on the “right” side and favored by God is the one that should prevail… Story as old as time. It worked for the Hebrews, right?
McCarthy and the John Birch Society were in full bloom. Much like today, only they didn’t have a pig like Trump available to run (Nixon tried in 1960) and weren’t able to seize complete control (although note the false claims of ‘election theft’ in 1960, and Kennedy’s assassination).
We have had many shady characters trying to take control of America’s wealth, especially since the Civil War. RESIST!
Actually, the 1960 election was tampered with, particularly in Chicago
At the same time, multiple states' results were close enough to warrant recounts that COULD have shifted the win to Nixon.
JFK's father was dirty and connected enough to have significantly affected end results in many state's, but Nixon chose not to pursue recounts.
So, we'll never know the actual truth and speculation will continue forever... or as long as anybody alive still cares.
Remember one thing, it was FAR easier back then to commit election fraud. In fact, there were hundreds of dead people who voted in Chicago that year, along with households recording residents who voted 50+ times.
Over the years, registering and voting became much stricter, eliminating the ability to get away with what happened all too often back then.
** Abstract The 1960 presidential election was the closest of the twentieth century when measured by the popular vote. John F Kennedy managed narrow margins in a number of critical states to carry him to victory over Richard M. Nixon. Because of the close call in Illinois (Kennedy won by an official count of 8,858 votes), the unsavory reputation of the Chicago Democratic organization, and certain newspaper reports, Republicans and Nixon became convinced that they had been cheated out of enough votes to have swung the state into the Republican column. This article analyzes these Republican allegations, which have been widely accepted, on the basis of two partial recounts of paper ballot precincts which were conducted in Cook County (Chicago) in the aftermath of the 1960 elections. This analysis shows that there was a pattern of miscounting votes which worked to the advantage of all Democratic candidates involved in the recount. The analysis also shows, however, that of the Republican candidates deprived of votes, Richard M. Nixon suffered the least. By comparing the two recounts and by making estimates based upon them it is possible to approximate a minimum number of votes Nixon lost as the result of election irregularities in Chicago. This figure of slightly less than 8,000 votes is not sufficient to make a convincing case that Nixon was cheated out of Illinois' electoral votes.
Sia: This shows that in only the TWO counties recounted, that Nixon was shorted 8,000 of the 8,858 difference in the entire state! No wonder they believed he was chested out of a win.
OTOH, even if he had been awarded Illinois, JFK would have still had 276 electoral votes and won anyway.
on February 12, 2026, 9:04 am
