Carl Sandburg and Lincoln

[Thomas Thorne]

Dear Rob
I remember you saying that Sandburg believed that if Lincoln had lived he would have bolted a radical dominated Republican party.

I just finished reading Claude Bowers' Reconstruction:The Tragic Era-published in 1929-which would seem to be the most popular rendition of the Dunning thesis. Bowers-who was from Indiana-was a brilliant writer, a racist who saw no need to use code words and totally lacked the judiciousness required in a historian.

Yet Bowers was a power in the land. He was the permanent chairman of the 1928 Democratic National Convention. His popular accounts of Jefferson vs Hamilton which saw American history as a struggle between plutocrats and the people are said to have been a great influence upon Franklin Roosevelt who agreed with Bowers that Jefferson was the founder of the Democratic Party. Bowers served 20 years under Roosevelt and Truman as ambassador to Spain and later Chile.

In the Bowers political theology, Radical Reconstruction served plutocratic as well as ghastly racial ends. To me it is fascinating how successful this Dunning brush tarred the sentiments of Liberals and Radicals of the era toward the 1860's Radical Republicans. I know Charles Beard and many progressives and radicals lacked Bowers' flamboyant racism but they showed no great concern for the plight of the freedmen.

What were Sandburg's views about reconstruction in light of his opinion of what Lincoln might have done re party affiliation?

I know that J G Randall wrote the then standard 1950's scholarly account of Reconstruction. How did his views differ from Bowers? He could hardly have been less judicious.
Tom