Carl Sandburg and Lincoln

[Bill Richter]

One of the great contradictions in the Progressive (Republican or Democrat) ideology, for historians or politicians, was the belief in superior races. This was not so evident in the South among Southern farmers at first (we too often study Populism as a Mid-western movement [see Hicks, The Populist Revolt]--it was but the main push was among black and white farmers of the South [see Saloutos, Farmer Movements in the South]), but came in strong with TR and WW and the city-orientation of of Progressives. It took Huey Long (unlike most Southern politicians the Longs were economic radicals, not racists [see the movie Blaze which looks at Earl's career, but most of the sense actually took place under Huey], and Eleanor Roosevelt and Hubert H Humphrey [an LSU master's candidate] to break this racism, but by then it was too late to be effective until the 1960s.