I have cited Bobbitt in the past, who had noted that Lincoln's Union was what Bobbitt termed the first nation state of terror. The Shield of Achilles
Bobbitt, reviewing Civil War material, and in view of his remarks on the jurisprudential legitimacy of Dred Scott, Constitutional Fate, Constitutional Interpretation, appears also to have thought this was hardly as innocent or as benevolent a regime as it has since been painted by Whig interpretations, including Foner's.
Here is another important piece of the puzzle, brought out publicly in broad daylight, already by Douglas in the First Debate Opening Speech, the issue of how the secret agreement between Lincoln, the Whig and Democrat abolitionists, and Trumbull, had turned out, at first. It had turned out not as agreed.
The account, as told by Douglas, is on p 52 of Holzer and probably retold in later debates.
Why is this discussion important? Because it shows facts proving the existence of a secret abolitionist society of politicians of both parties, of a conspiracy among them, of a perceived or actual conspirators' double cross of Lincoln by Trumbull and others, and about the retribution Lincoln then later exacted for that double cross.
Trumbull, as Douglas describes, after the double cross, had then become Lincoln's thorough paced tool, traducing Douglas, to get Douglas' spot for Lincoln "in order to quiet Lincoln".
They had to pass a resolution that Lincoln was the first choice of the Republican party.
That was also why the Republican Convention were compelled to instruct for Lincoln and for nobody else, when they nominated him, according to Douglas.
See Zarefski, Lincoln Douglas and Slavery, p. 42. Zarefski seems to have had no clue why this was the case, called it confusing, and doesn't think to question what may have lain behind this fact situation.
(For the preponderance of northern white racism requiring a secret society abolitionism candidate, see Zarefski p. 19. Northerners did not want negroes free or slave, and voted for Lincoln thinking he would remove them, gradual extinction accompanied by removal was Lincoln's story. Frankly, it involved keeping them bottled up only in the South until removed. There was never, from the northern electorate perspective, any possibility of allowing free negroes in the north or in the territories. Removal is the word the electorate was thinking, not emancipate, or enfranchise. Lincoln's expressed view of Dred Scott was thus his most dangerous and exposed admission for his secret society plan, the one most likely to not get him elected. This was also why Douglas pounded Lincoln's Dred Scott view so very hard, in the very first speech, after exposing the secret society. Only an immediate abolitionist would object to
Dred Scott on the ground that it had denied the rights and privileges of citizenship to negroes, slave or free.)
As Douglas said, they had nobody else in the Republican Party, except Lincoln, for the reason that Lincoln demanded that they should now carry out "the arrangement".
Why therefore, did they, a political party convention, summarily bypass even from consideration, as Douglas even listed some of them, Archy Williams, Orville Browning, John Wentworth, Norman Judd, all fellow Republicans?
One word: Fear!
Maybe there was another word: Greed!
Why were they afraid?
For the same reason Douglas said Trumbull was then traducing against Douglas, to get Douglas' spot for Lincoln, because Trumbull and the fellow abolitionists had either failed or double crossed Lincoln already, and Trumbull was doing it "in order to quiet Lincoln".
What do you think "in order to quiet Lincoln" might have meant to Trumbull, and to Lincoln's fellow Republican party abolitionists?
I am telling you now, it meant one very big thing:
That if Trumbull and the Republican party secret society did not make amends, and seal the deal with Lincoln at its head now, he would not hesitate to now rat them all out, as being a secret society of radical abolitionists, not gradualists, not even actual colonizers, and he would let the chips fall where they might in the aftermath of his disclosures. See Arendt, Origins, The Totalitarian Movement.
Compare Trumbull's comments on Lincoln, his secretiveness, unwillingness to share any more information with anyone than he thought necessary at the time, cited in a webpage in a post below,
http://www.mrlincolnandfriends.org/members-of-congress/lyman-trumbull/
with Arendt, Origins, pb, p. 376, fn. 90, '.....Hitler to his General Staff 1939, "...a primer for a secret society."
Even great historians like J G Randall, whom I have cited many times here, and on whom Nevins admitted he had later relied heavily, failed to see that Lincoln was an abolitionist from the beginning and involved in a secret agreement with other abolitionists of both parties to form the Republican Party. Randall had thought Lincoln a moderate, a gradualist, had taken him at his word, so to speak.
Why was the new Republican Party secret society so interesting? Because it involved and combined abolitionist renegades from both the Whigs and Democrats!
It was the wholesale party betrayal of both the majorities of elected politicians of each party, and of the great majority of the constituents of each major party, by the immediate abolitionist rogues joining the Republican secret society party.
As Douglas put it, Holzer p. 52, "...having formed this new party for the joint benefit of deserters from Whiggery and deserters from Democracy---..."
Why did these scalawags and carpetbagger traitors to their parties and people do it?
It ended up being by far the biggest political and financial bonanza for these politicians and their party this nation ever saw or ever will.
They won the Civil War, reaped the proceeds in all directions, didn't pay the bills, and kept themselves, their successors, assigns, puppets, and their cronies in power from 1860 all the way until 1932, (ignoring Wilson as a Democrat), 72 long sad years. Lincoln's Immigration Act, the most ambitious in American history was not for the South. it was not really designed to replace negroes, who weren't now going anywhere. The Immigration Act was for importing foreign whites for the North and the West.
For the South, it was Lincoln's Morgenthau Plan, keep control for a time, keep freed negroes voting Republican, and let white southerners do something about negroes if they could. It was not the job of the federal government, after the Reconstruction Northern occupation. Not its job to repatriate them, not its job to assure them any source of livelihood. Not its job. Only to make sure that southern whites did not reinstitute negro slavery, or try to export negroes either north or west. That was when the fat really finally hit the fire.
The Republicans' colonization plan for negroes turned out to have actually meant this: the South was to now become an isolated colony of Africa, cut off from the rest of America. And that is largely what it remained for a long time.
Even when a left Democrat finally took over, (ignoring Wilson as a Democrat), in 1932, after 72 years, he did almost nothing to change that whatsoever.