To the Editor:
I thank John Herron for his helpful and informative summary of my book Lincoln’s Ethics (“Lincoln the Political Operator,” December 11). However, I disagree with two of Herron’s criticisms.
1. Herron writes, “When the Whigs dissolved, he joined cause with the Republicans but also a loose confederation of pro-Union Democrats. He did so because they shared not his ethics but his understanding of politics.” But the Republican Party was an antislavery party, and Lincoln’s bitter opposition to slavery was a central reason why he joined the party. He re-entered politics in the mid-1850s because he was “roused as never before” by the Kansas-Nebraska Act and his fear that it would lead to the expansion and perpetuation of slavery. Lincoln opposed slavery because he thought that it was morally wrong and a “monstrous injustice.”
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