KRUGMAN'S LINCOLN

'Not to put too fine a point on it: What Abraham Lincoln and his Republican party are selling increasingly boils down to white nationalism — hatred and fear of darker people, with a hefty dose of anti-states' rights, which is always part of that cocktail. This racist nationalist abolitionist message attracts a majority of Americans.' My paraphrase of Krugman

"...race prejudice seems stronger in those states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists, and nowhere is it more intolerant than in states where slavery was never known."  Tocqueville

Those Northern states that had abolished slavery had done so not only not to help the black man, and to help the white, and not only by leaving free white labor without slave competition, and not only by eliminating the corrupting influence of owning slaves upon whites, but, much more importantly, they did not want negroes around, free or slave, in the North or anywhere else in America.

Lincoln's Union was, after all, as Philip Bobbitt pointed out in The Shield of Achilles, not only the first nation state, but also the first nation state of terror.