Abraham Lincoln and the American Republic

By Daniel Mallock (December 2025)

 

The exceptional author David Solway presented a strongly argued case against Abraham Lincoln in the November issue of New English Review. Entitled “The American Civil War and the American Revolution,” numerous assertions about Lincoln’s character and motives as well as the long-term consequences of both are made. Not being confident that the comments section of Mr. Solway’s elegantly written argument was the appropriate venue to present a proper counter-argument, this article is offered instead.

The author powerfully sets the tone in the first paragraph with the assertion that “there is no doubt that Lincoln, his character, self-presentation and ulterior purposes, is at the root of understanding the situation in antebellum—and bellum and postbellum—America.” Like a fine bourbon or wine, the points and accusations presented in the body of Mr. Solway’s article follow the theme of the introduction, and the conclusion reiterates the assertions made at the opening.

Mr. Solway suggests that the present circumstances of American society, government, and culture (all now profoundly troubled and dysfunctional to certain degrees) are the direct consequences of decisions made by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. This contention is popular among some students of American history and other interested parties though the argument is not one commonly seen and, as will be shown, is difficult (if not impossible) to support.

The author claims that “Lincoln, for example, was by no means the simple, rural, rail-splitter of popular legend…” The truth of the matter is that Lincoln actually was a simple, rural, rail-splitter. He was also incredibly honest, honorable, hard-working, and brilliant. These were the qualities of character that brought him up out of poverty and obscurity.

Mr. Solway writes that “from the very formation of the Republic, it was pretty much understood that the Federal government was the agent of the individual states and not vice versa. Individual states reserved to themselves the obligation to protect the independence of their own citizens from Federal laws they believed were unconstitutional, as prescribed by Thomas Jefferson’s November 10,1798 Kentucky Resolve.”

The author implies that secession was “understood” to be acceptable and a foundational “cornerstone” of the American system. He also suggests that nullification was a fundamental right of the sovereign states and that Jefferson’s pro-nullification political theory as written by him in the Kentucky Resolves “prescribes” the legitimacy of both. The right to nullify federal laws was never a constitutional right of the states. The Jefferson nullification theory was tested several times, each time failing.

Andrew Jackson (though he was a Jeffersonian) correctly and strongly opposed nullification when South Carolina threatened it in 1832 (due to tariffs that they considered unfair). When Jefferson suggested in a 1799 letter to Madison (while Jefferson was the vice president) that secession might also be a viable option for the states, Madison opposed the idea as extremism.

Jefferson’s nullification political theory was built upon a then-common concept of the Union as “flexible” and the belief that states retained their sovereignty within the Union. However, there was no constitutional support for the idea that states could nullify (i.e., cancel) federal laws.

Nullification thus was, and still is, a matter of de facto implementation that relies upon the inaction or acquiescence of the federal authority in such matters rather than any legal basis that justifies it. The best case in point in today’s world, a world that Mr. Solway claims was created by Lincoln, are the so-called sanctuary cities and states created by insurrectionist Democrats whereby local jurisdictions have been allowed, through federal government inaction, to nullify federal immigration and criminal laws. That Mr. Lincoln was a Republican and that the Civil War was started by Democrats and that the current insurrectionist and nullification crimes of  (formerly) open borders and now illegal protections for illegal aliens are all Democrat-supported and not Republican-supported are not discussed in Mr. Solway’s article.

During the antebellum period which Mr. Solway claims can best be understood by understanding Lincoln’s “character, self-presentation and ulterior purposes” the Republicans stood their ground against the expansion of slavery. They also characterized it as a moral evil (and inherently unconstitutional). The Republican position thus set up the most consequential and costly test of Thomas Jefferson’s secession and nullification political theories.

The new Republican party, being strongly abolitionist, had little to no presence in the Southern states prior to the 1860 election. They did not spend the money and time to distribute Republican presidential ballots in the South because they knew well that Lincoln would get few if any votes there. This is why in some Southern states Lincoln received zero votes. What voter in the Southern states would support the 1860 core plank of the Republican party which promised that the expansion of slavery into the territories and new states would be blocked? That is, the slave system would not be allowed to grow­—which strongly suggested that the Republicans and their abolitionist base would shrink it and finally dismantle it.

 

Plank 7: “That the new dogma that the Constitution, of its own force, carries slavery into any or all of the territories of the United States, is a dangerous political heresy, at variance with the explicit provisions of that instrument itself, with contemporaneous exposition, and with legislative and judicial precedent; is revolutionary in its tendency, and subversive of the peace and harmony of the country.”

 

Ominously, for the slaveholders of the South and the border states, plank 8 implied a direct threat to the slave system. It also emphatically stated that slavery was inherently illegal and unconstitutional, and that Republicans were obliged to see its end.

 

Plank 8: “That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that ‘no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,’ it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.”

 

When the war came Lincoln had, despite Republican abolitionism, at first tried to keep the slave system largely untouched. This was certainly a political necessity so that border state slave-holding loyalists would not be offended (and shift their loyalties to the Confederacy). He made his essentially pragmatic position clear in a public letter to leading abolitionist and editor, Horace Greely, on August 22, 1862.

 

“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

 

Mr. Solway wrote that, “Lincoln was, if I may put it this way, his Party’s mule for smuggling protectionism, corporate welfare and the nationalization of the fiat money supply into the body politic, which is precisely what he did. The first Federal Reserve System of 1913 was previsioned in Lincoln’s National Bank Act of 1863/4, legislation pivotal to financing the Civil War.”

Mr. Solway characterizes the National Bank Act as akin to some diabolical tool used in the purposeful centralization of federal power and the destruction of freedoms by a power-mad Lincoln. An alternative and likely more accurate characterization is that the National Bank Act was a necessary national institutional change/response that allowed the North to continue to prosecute the war. The Federal Reserve Bank in their official discussion of the National Banking Act reiterate and confirm Mr. Solway’s characterization of it as “pivotal to financing the Civil War” while also assigning no nefarious purposes to it.

 

The National Banking Acts of 1863 and 1864 marked an important moment in the development of the U.S. banking system. Congress passed these bills as a wartime expedient to (i) help finance the war effort by increasing the demand for federal government debt and (ii) promote a stable uniform currency. The National Banking Acts also established many federal banking regulations that would remain until (and in many cases after) the Federal Reserve System was established in 1914.

 

Although Mr. Solway does not explain why “the nationalization of the fiat money supply into the body politic” or the National Bank Act of 1863/4 are bad things, it is important perhaps to place such national economic and monetary decisions made during time of (total) war into a wider comparative context. Most importantly, the National Bank Act enacted during the Civil War did not result in the first national bank in the United States.

Alexander Hamilton created the first National Bank during Washington’s administration. During Jackson’s administration the second National Bank under its corrupt, arrogant director, Nicholas Biddle, had become such a source of influence peddling, corruption, and heavy-handed manipulation of members of Congress who owed money to the bank such that it became a direct threat to the function, purpose, and character of the federal government. That is, as correctly seen by President Jackson, the second National Bank of the United States because of its power, influence, and corrupt leadership had become an existential threat to the constitution.

According to Martin Van Buren’s autobiography, Jackson said to him, on July 8, 1832, “the bank, Mr. Van Buren is trying to kill me, but I will kill it.” (Emphasis in original.) Jackson was correct to destroy it even though he knew that doing so would cause a national economic crisis and downturn, and would likely damage his reputation—it did both.

Why Mr. Solway focuses on Lincoln’s economic war measure to fund the Civil War but does not mention the first or second National Banks in similar fashion is not specified. Is the complaint from Mr. Solway regarding centralized banking a universal one or one limited to Mr. Lincoln’s involvement only? Monetary policy is a life and death matter for governments at peace or war.

When the last king of France decided to send arms, people (e.g., Lafayette), ships, and large amounts of money to aid the anti-monarchical American Revolutionists in their war against France’s great enemy the British, insufficient consideration was given as to the impact that this massive investment would have on the French economy.

The consequence of this oversight (or perhaps simply ineffective planning) to the 800-year-old French monarchy was catastrophic. The collapse of the French economy in the years prior to the revolution in 1789 was caused in large part by the shortfall in the treasury due to loans and monies given to the American revolutionaries.

It was news of the removal by Louis XVI of the popular Minister of Finance, Jacques Necker that sparked the 1789 French Revolution and, soon after, the fall of the French monarchy.

Immediately upon hearing of the dismissal of Necker, Camille Desmoulins, a radical revolutionary propagandist and agitator impulsively jumped up onto an outdoor café table in the center of Paris and harangued the crowd to take up arms against the monarchy. The immediate result was the attack on the Bastille and its destruction—the beginning of the revolution. The longer-term result, in this case, was that Desmoulins, his wife, the King and his wife would all soon be dead as the revolution swept over them and Europe.

Therefore, countries at war (such as the United States) were/are known to make exceptional changes in institutions and economic policy specifically to avoid a nation-ending fate perhaps similar to that of the French monarchy.

The American Civil War was an existential one for both sides. Both belligerent governments, in Washington and in Richmond, were forced to make radical changes, implement sometimes painful and difficult policies, and increase the power held by the central authority (Richmond or Washington) in order to prosecute the war and keep their respective governments together—and the war effort strongly sustained.

National draft and taxation policies in the Confederacy, for example, were considered so onerous by some Southern states that several CS governors seriously threatened secession from the secessionist revolutionary government.

One then can reasonably ask, how can a nation (such as the Confederate States of America) founded on the concept of state sovereignty retain unity, national cohesion, and identity, particularly during times of extreme pressure and crisis due to existential war? The secession nation (CSA) did this by essentially banning secession.

The rhetorical clarity regarding the nature of the new Union of states as found in the CS constitution solved the problem of the unfortunate rhetorical ambiguity in the US constitution (which many considered fundamental to the coming of the war).

The Confederate constitution preamble reads,

 

“We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government (emphasis mine), establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.”

 

The preamble of the constitution of the United States reads,

 

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union (emphasis mine), establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

 

The ironically permanent character of the new Confederate nation (based as it was on the sovereignty of the states and on their belief that leaving the previous Union was legal) was just one of the many changes and declarations made under the extraordinary pressures of existential war. Ending slavery and enlisting and arming black soldiers were two other war measures made by the North that would have long-term consequences—both good and bad.

In their world of total war, Lincoln, as well as Jefferson Davis, necessarily were required to make enormous existential decisions. Both leaders and their peoples would have to deal with the consequences of these decisions after the war was over, that is if they were still alive and if their country still existed.

Lincoln understood that black manpower was an essential key to defeating the South—ending slavery was the way to encourage black men to enlist. They did enlist, they fought bravely, and Lincoln did end slavery—not only because this was an important policy to help win the war, but also because ending the slave system was a central goal of the Republican party.

In March 1865, the Confederacy, too, authorized the enlistment and arming of black soldiers to fight in Confederate uniform. As the concept of soldiers fighting to keep themselves and their families enslaved is an impossible one this new and widely unexpected Confederate national survival policy then would have certainly led to the eventual and likely fairly swift ending of slavery in the South.

Regarding the recruitment and arming of slaves for Confederate service, Confederate General Howell Cobb wrote to CS Secretary of War, James Seddon on January 8, 1865. Cobb wrote that, for him, it was “a source of deep mortification and regret to see the name of that good and great man and soldier, General R. E. Lee, given as authority for such a policy.”

 

“The day you make soldiers of them is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong but they won’t make soldiers.”

 

That the Confederacy collapsed in April, 1865, meant that no black CSA soldiers were ever officially enlisted and no black CSA regiments were ever officially raised.

Mr. Solway places the blame for the current crises and dysfunctions of American culture and political system on Abraham Lincoln.

He writes that “Lincoln is the true Father of the modern nation with its racial conflicts, stark administrative control, left-wing censorship and pervasive corruption…” Since Lincoln ended slavery is the argument made here that Lincoln is responsible for “racial conflicts” because he ended slavery?

The author writes that “The Civil War was fought essentially to cement the Union as the basis for a strong central authority over localized state control, that is, through the consolidation of power in a few hands rather than the dispersal of political power via the sovereign states. It was the ground for empire, not a voluntary Republic.”

In the assertion cited above there is a confusion of causation and effect.

The Civil War was fought by the United States to defeat the Confederate Rebellion and keep the Union together. The eradication of the slave system was added later as a core war aim. That centralization increased in both North and South during the war and continued to develop in the North after the war was not a purpose of the war but rather was a result of it.

The idea that the Civil War was fought to “consolidate power in a few hands” is contrary to the fact that a nation fighting for its existence must necessarily consolidate power. That the Confederates did the same to try to save their new country suggests that this centralization effort was a consequence of the war, and not a cause.

The author suggests that “the chasm between a political, financial and corporate elite on one side and a relatively powerless citizenry on the other has gradually grown entrenched under the rubric of ‘democracy’” but that America is “still the land of the approximately free.”

The disparity of achievement and wealth within the American population is not a consequence of any decision made by Lincoln over 150 years ago. Disparity in the United States is a function of capabilities of individuals not of some cruel system or institution (such as, oh, slavery) that keeps certain people from earning and achieving, and advancing in the economy and society.

It was the ending of the slave system by Lincoln that was perhaps the great decision that began to create an environment of opportunity for a large segment of the population who had been, prior to the efforts and sacrifices of Lincoln and of Union soldiers, denied rights and opportunity only because of the color of their skin. There is no system in the United States today that creates or enforces disparity.

The author suggests a linkage between Lincoln’s leadership during 1861-65 and the circumstances of today’s “relatively powerless citizenry” yet provides no evidence for such a linkage nor any evidence to support the contention that Americans are “relatively powerless.”

One can make the counter-argument that Americans have perhaps the most personal freedoms and opportunities available to them as compared to citizens of any country on the planet.

The author blames Lincoln for “left-wing censorship” though he characterizes Lincoln as a right-wing political extremist bent on increasing centralized federal power at the expense of states and individuals.

The author asserts that “despite the adulation in which the sixteenth president is held or the invoking of an exalted purpose presumably justifying the Civil War, for all his deceptiveness and autocratic conduct…” the responsibility for the present-day ills of America is Lincoln’s.

The author further claims that “Lincoln and his Civil War planted a centralized, managerial State, a syndicated educational behemoth, a State-controlled National Bank with the power to print fiat currency at will, an immense corporate presence and a sedimentary judiciary on Constitutional soil.”

The Civil War was not “Lincoln’s Civil War.” Hundreds of thousands of Northerners answered Lincoln’s calls to volunteer for the war because they supported the War and the mission to sustain the Union (and defeat the rebellion—and later to end the slave system).

The author claims that the creation of “a monolithic, centralized, managerial State that bears little resemblance to the intent of the Founding Fathers and the Republican vision inherent in the Constitution” had been Lincoln’s nefarious plan all along and that the secession of the slave states was nothing other than his opportunity to see such things to fruition.

“Like it or hate it,” the author writes, “this was Lincoln’s plan and accomplishment, everything else was ammunition for the cause, including slavery, as his letters, speeches, personal notes and newspaper articles make plain.”

If ever a conflict was unavoidable and inevitable it was our Civil War. The South believed that secession was legal and constitutional and that each state retained its sovereign character when it joined the federal compact. This was the Confederate position and certainly was that of Thomas Jefferson, all of whom never understood that the Union of the states was not about retention of sovereignty in the states but rather about the building of a more perfect Union among and between the states (that is, strength through unity).

Jefferson and Robert E. Lee after him were great Americans in the pre-Revolution model of sovereign former colonies of Great Britain—they never truly accepted the supremacy of the Union and always held in reserve the “trump card” of nullification or secession.

During the Embargo Act crisis of Jefferson’s second term several New England states whose livelihoods depended on international trade (trade which Jefferson had stopped to pressure Britain and France via a failed radical utopian foreign policy) threatened secession if the Embargo Act was not lifted. John Quincy Adams personally warned Jefferson that the Union would be ended if the Embargo was not. In an exceptional act of wisdom (as well as political and ideological defeat) Jefferson did end the Embargo Act not only because the policy had failed in its purpose but specifically to save the Union.

After the war, the former president of the Confederate States of America, Jefferson Davis, wrote two volumes on the legality of secession. Such volumes have also been written just as convincingly arguing the legality of opposing secession—and the perpetual nature of the Union compact as (ambiguously) implied in the constitution itself.

The constitution was sufficiently vague on the matter of secession that defenders of either position could make a convincing case.

The Civil War was inevitable mainly due to the constitution’s unfortunate ambiguity about secession and regarding the particulars of sovereignty (or lack of it) of each state. This vagueness as to the unbreakable (or flexible) nature of the Union was ironically addressed in the preamble to the Confederate Constitution.

The ever-increasing insistence at the North (a viewpoint represented politically by the Republican party and Abraham Lincoln) that the slavery system of the South, so utterly entrenched and foundational to that region’s culture, society, and economy, be immediately ended was equally instrumental in the coming of the war. That Thomas Jefferson himself, who proclaimed himself opposed to slavery in his writing but remained an active slave holder and slave buyer/seller anyhow, shows both the perfidy/hypocrisy of Mr. Jefferson and the exceptionally deep roots of that repellent system in the South.

Once the several Southern states began arranging their secession conventions and then voting themselves out of the Union—and almost universally declaring in their “Ordinances of Secession” that one of the fundamental causes of their departure from the Union was the constant pressure they felt against slavery and its expansion—the issues of abolition, the continuance of the slave system, and of the constitutional legality of secession itself could no longer be decided anywhere but on bloody battlefields.

In his first Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861, Lincoln asserted that no state could leave the Union. He strongly suggested that secession would result in war—though that was an outcome he did not want.

 

It follows from these views that no State upon its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void, and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances.

 

Lincoln made the point that secession was not only illegal but illogical, and that secession must then beget secession again, and again. His message was that secession was folly and that it would have catastrophic consequences.

 

From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this.

 

In such a highly charged political environment Lincoln begged the South to remain in the Union.

 

In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to ‘preserve, protect, and defend it.’

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

 

Finally, when the secessionists fired on Fort Sumter, Lincoln issued his initial call for 75,000 volunteers to defend the Union and defeat the rebellion. Many, many more would volunteer in the coming months and years.

One can view and rebel against the consequences of history and try to “walk backward” in time, so-to-speak, along the path of events to try to determine how it all began and why things turned out as they did.

Sometimes in such an investigatory “walk back into the past” one discovers a single person standing apparently at the very center of the unraveled threads of history and chords of memory. One could forgive the investigator if they came to a conclusion (perhaps erroneously) that this was the very culprit-the responsible party—and shouted “Look!! It’s him (or her)!!”

The author’s concluding statement includes a dramatic assertion of Lincoln’s extraordinary responsibility for today’s troubles, and with 4 specific elements: “Lincoln is the true father of the modern nation with its (1)racial conflicts, (2)stark administrative control, (3)left-wing censorship and (4)pervasive corruption that has only just begun to be addressed.”

 

• Element 1 (racial conflicts) has always been a central challenge in American history. The leftist radicals of BLM and other Democrat/communist groups say that it still is a central issue though their true purpose is the destruction of the state. That is, those who want to destroy the state and the society use (and encourage/facilitate) “racial conflicts” as tools for their revolutionary/seditious purposes.
  Is it fair/accurate to blame “racial conflicts” of the present day on the man who ended the slave system?
  Ending the slave system must necessarily be the first step in resolving any racial conflicts in the United States. That one side wanted to protect the slave system and the other limit it and finally destroy it were the main reasons that the Civil War came.
  Finally, nobody ever said that ending the slave system would immediately (or even not so immediately) end “racial conflicts.”
• Element 2 (stark administrative control) has been and should be blamed on Democrat politicians. It should be noted that Democrat politicians caused the Civil War, supported slavery, supported the Klan, supported secession, and built the administrative state that President Trump is now dismantling.
  Centralizing government authority during the Civil War by Lincoln to preserve the Union and defeat the rebellion has little to do with the bloated and profoundly corrupt deep state/administrative state built and buttressed by Democrats (and Republican facilitators) in the last 50-100 years. When the crimes committed by Democrat utopian communists nominally “working” in American agencies such as USAID and using American taxpayer monies to commit crimes of influence and worse, the national astonishment and anger will be immense.
• Element 3 (left-wing censorship) can be blamed on left-wing Democrats, communists, and their supporters over the last 100 years.
  Lincoln has nothing whatever to do with left-wing censorship.
  Left-wing censorship is part of the attempt by communists and other utopian radicals to undermine and destroy the United States. Whittaker Chambers described this long-term plot very thoroughly in his excellent book “Witness,” one of the greatest American autobiographies.
  When the Soviet Union fell in 1989 some lesser analysts of politics at that time thought that the decades-old communist project to undermine the United States was therefore over. They could not have been more wrong.
• Element 4 (pervasive corruption) exists in all societies and nations—some certainly worse than others. The idea is to root out the corrupt and hold them accountable.
  When political leadership itself is corrupt (Democrat politicians) holding the corrupt accountable becomes almost an impossibility. President Trump is doing his best to “drain the swamp” and hold the corrupt accountable.
  Trump’s actions are all part of the brilliance of the master plan of the founders which was based on the concept of systemic checks and balances. Through elections we can hold corrupt leadership accountable (that is, check/stop leadership corruption by voting the corrupt out of office). When such leadership steal elections (2020) this undermines the foundations of the republic because systemic checks and balances are defeated and the power/voice of the people through the ballot box is nullified.
  Can we accurately describe Abraham Lincoln as the “true father” of American “pervasive corruption?”

 

That race relations did not become harmonious after the defeat of the slave system is very unfortunate. Many people in the aftermath of the war tried to facilitate the integration of black people into American politics, society and culture. One of the most unexpected and brave post-war champions of black integration and acceptance was none other than Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest.

That there are forces in the country today that create and encourage ongoing race conflicts to further their anti-American purposes is also extremely unfortunate—it is truly a matter of national security. Does this then all mean that the slave system should not have been ended?

Mr. Solway asserts that “the Union was saved but the Republic was destroyed” due to the actions of Mr. Lincoln. What elements of the American Republic disappeared as a result of the Civil War other than the vile slave system?

The author writes that “it is, of course, Donald Trump’s stated mission—in effect, to undo at least in part what Lincoln did, whether he knows it or not.” If this were the case one has to ask why then does President Trump have a portrait of Abraham Lincoln on the wall of the Oval Office, and in close proximity to Washington’s portrait?

Perhaps President Trump sees himself similar to Lincoln in his second term (Trump’s first second term having been stolen) as a war-time president in an existential conflict to save the Union.

Perhaps President Trump sees himself like President Lincoln—as Commander-in-Chief of a country at war against internal forces of corruption and division whose purpose is the destruction of the United States.

 

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Daniel Mallock is the author of Agony and Eloquence: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and a World of Revolution.

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