Republicans counter the ridiculous charge that Lincoln favored African Americans over white Americans. Instead, they use many individual instances to assert an equally absurd claim of a long history of Democratic support of African American rights.

A politically re-energized Lincoln shrewdly plots to stop the spread of slavery after the infamous 1857 Dred Scott case.

Lincoln asks Illinois’s future governor to plant an anonymous endorsement for Congressional candidate James Matheny in local newspapers. Though Matheny was not a Republican, Lincoln explains, “he is with us” in opposing the Dred Scott decision. Broadening the base of the Republican Party, Lincoln argues, is essential to defeating pro-slavery forces.

“Your unconditional submission to the Government and laws is all that I demand: and the great & magnanimous Nation that I represent have no desire for revenge upon you, but they will never allow you to again enslave those, who have been made free by your rebellion.”

From the year baseball stepped forward as the national sport: Lincoln, the ‘Rail Splitter,’ is depicted as a victorious player, with candidates Bell, Douglas and Breckinridge looking on. This not only is the first identified reference of baseball as the “national game,” but also can be considered the start of the tradition of sports metaphors in American politics.

Massachusetts Congressman John F. Kennedy makes a powerful statement about the place of religion, specifically his own Catholicism, in politics. Here he criticizes a priest in western Massachusetts for using religion as a political wedge in a local school election, reminding Catholics, who tended to vote Democratic, of the difficulties faced by Al Smith, a Catholic, in his presidential campaign in 1928. “I think that the priest up there should be reprimanded by the Bishop for attempting to make a religious war out of a school election. And then they complain about Al Smith’s treatment.”

The Democratic presidential ticket of 1868 made no secret of their position on race, hoping to encourage voters with a platform “Opposed to Negro Suffrage and Negro Equality.”

Boudinot discredits Vermont Congressman Matthew Lyon, the first politician to be jailed for criticizing the president under the terms of the Sedition Act of 1798. “I am sorry that your state have so disgraced themselves by sending again as their Representative the in-famous Lyon – but, we are in an age of excentricity! May we weather the storm!” To the chagrin of John Adams and the Federalists, Lyons was re-elected while in jail.

“This is no time for fear, for reaction or for timidity … ours must be a party of liberal thought, of planned action, of enlightened international outlook, and of the greatest good to the greatest number of our citizens…”

With the war going badly, the 1864 election is no shoo-in for the incumbent.

Frederick A. Aiken, former Secretary of the Democratic National Convention, applauds General John C. Frémont’s nomination by the Radical Republicans. He suggests that Frémont will have the blessing of the Democrats if he goes up against Lincoln for the Republican nomination. Aiken went on to serve (unsuccessfully) as defense attorney for Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt.

“...take care that every Abolitionist reads this letter this week.”

“The negro vote was not at all committed to Kennedy, but it went there because Mr. Nixon did not do anything to win it.  I understand his view but felt he was making a mistake …”

The famous retired baseball star – at that time an NAACP fundraiser and vice president of Chock Full O’ Nuts coffee – campaigned hard for Richard Nixon in 1960. Here, in the aftermath of defeat, he offers suggestions as to how the party of Lincoln might attract more future African-American voters in his (and Nixon’s) native California.

“If I contributed in the last week of April 1861 to save the Capital, I think I did as much in taking Norfolk … If I have not done all that might have been expected it is no fault of mine, but of those who controlled the affairs of the country. … I was anxious to take Norfolk and Richmond … McClellan possessed none of those heroic virtues which leads to victory or success. … McClellan would neither take Richmond nor let others take it …”

Written to historian Benson Lossing for use in his classic 3-volume Pictorial History of the Civil War. General Wool had sent a preliminary letter on December 10, 1865, eight months after Appomattox. Here, he sends a revised version of that letter in an unidentified hand, along with his personal cover letter. Wool defends his own conduct during the first half of the Civil War and offers bitter criticism of his superiors, especially George McClellan, whom he saw as unqualified to command the Army of the Potomac, much less the whole Union Army. He insists that he could have taken Norfolk and Richmond in March, 1862, when McClellan and Johnston still faced each other in northern Virginia, had the Lincoln administration given him supplies and orders. He would have destroyed the Merrimac [C.S.S. Virginia] – the revolutionary Confederate ironclad – during its construction phase. Wool argues that his eventual conquest of Norfolk and the destruction of the Merrimac (on May 11) helped save McClellan’s army and Washington, D.C. itself.

An early Lincoln campaign biography based on interviews with Lincoln associates in Springfield.

“I am mighty pleased that you liked the article, and what I said about Wilson’s proposal…”

Roosevelt collaborates with a fellow critic to attack Woodrow Wilson’s failed proposal to mediate peace between Germany and the Allies in December 1916. He reveals an uncharacteristic frustration with the American people here, two months after Wilson’s close reelection victory over Charles Evans Hughes, in which Wilson campaigned on the promise to “keep us out of war.”

“It is extraordinary how impossible it seems to be to make men learn the lessons of history. Apparently you … have absolutely forgotten how things were done in the early days of the Republican party. There was no attempt made to insist upon uniformity of action in every state…. Of course, I am no more to be compared to Lincoln than the present crisis is to be compared to the Civil War; but the principles are the same in the two cases…”