But is he really keeping the edited diary of George Templeton Strong sitting around so that he can see what Strong was thinking 150 years ago today? Strong on Lincoln:
He is a barbarian, Scythian, yahoo, or gorilla, in respect of outside polish (for example, he uses "humans" as English for homines), but a most sensible, straightforward, honest old codger. The best President we have had since old Jackson's time, at least, as I believe; for Zachary Taylor's few days of official life can hardly be counted as a presidential term. His evident integrity and simplicity of purpose would compensate for worse grammar than his, and for even more intense provincialism and rusticity.The bolded part is, of course, Strong being an asshole. But this is how the Republican coalition was forged: the committed egalitarians had to win power, and so they had to embrace to some extent the white supremacy of the time, even more than the white supremacy they had been unable to avoid imbuing and taking into their worldview. That meant winning over people like Strong, who saw reference to blacks as humans to be a stretch.
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