Who is this person?

[David Lockmiller]

(04-06-2024 08:33 PM)David Lockmiller Wrote:  

(04-06-2024 02:10 PM)RJNorton Wrote:  David, I never in a million years could have answered this question. I wonder...do you think this Lincoln quote came from his heart, or was it simply Lincoln being the politician and saying something he thought the gentleman most likely wanted to hear?

Roger, I think he was just being factual.

Roger, I wanted to expand on this statement.

I would not say this statement Lincoln made to Singleton "came from [Lincoln's] heart" because of the firm opinion held by James W. Singleton regarding how a newly-elected Democratic Party government in 1864 should move forward in negotiations with the South.

Singleton presided over an informal convention and helped draft a platform that defended slavery as a positive good. He described the people of the Confederacy as “brothers in blood” and recommended that “we should make all possible efforts to join them in a mutual policy of unconditional negotiation for the attainment of peace.”

However, Singleton asked not only that his fellow party Democratic Party members not vote for McClellan, but he positively argued to the members of that faction of the Democratic Party which he led that they should all vote for Lincoln in the coming election.

President Lincoln made his statement to Singleton on October 18 or 19, 1864.

Professor Michael Burlingame wrote of a prior event:

On August 23, 1864, the despairing Lincoln wrote one of his most curious documents, a memorandum revealing his belief that a Democratic victory was likely:

“This morning, as for some days past, it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards."

He folded and sealed this document and then, inexplicably, asked his cabinet to sign it without knowing its contents. It became known as the “blind memorandum.”

Thus, at the time President Lincoln made his statement to Singleton on October 18 or 19, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln was being factual: “You have done more than any one else to insure my reelection.”