Democrats Did Not Keep Lincoln Off the Ballot

Democrat activists in Colorado and Maine dictatorially kicked Trump off the primary ballot in those states.  Historically ignorant Neocons had a field day, labeling the Left as “Neo-Confederates.”

Fox News Jesse Watters ranted, “Democrats booted Lincoln off the ballot in 10 states.” Declaring that “history always has a way of repeating itself,” he continued, “Just like Southern Democrats did to Lincoln, the Colorado Supreme Court banished Trump from the ballot.”

Anti-South in all things Victor Davis Hansen took to X with a rambling post about “Ballot Banishing and Our New Leftwing Confederates.”  Parroting the leftist lies about history Hanson wrote, “In the election of 1860, southern Democrats in 10 states of the soon-to-be formalized Confederacy made it almost impossible for their own voters to cast ballots for Abraham Lincoln for President.  In that sense, the Left in Colorado would have felt right at home in the ante-bellum South—erasing the name of a presidential candidate whom they loathed and by whom they were similarly terrified.”

Except that this is a lie.  USA Today accurately reported the facts.  Experts with whom USA Today consulted said the comparison between 1860 and now makes no sense.  Before the 1880s, political parties printed and distributed the ballots, not the state.  In 1860 there were four parties vying for power: the Republican Party, the northern and southern Democratic parties, and the Constitutional Union Party.  Ballots were not secret so voter intimidation was an issue.  Ten of the 11 states that later would form the Confederacy did not have Republican ballots with Lincoln’s name on them because the Republican Party essentially did not exist in the South and so did not campaign there.  Since the party’s platform was anti-slavery, it was believed that distributing Republican ballots in the South would have been useless.  Because the Constitution left the responsibility of running elections to the states, in the late 19^th century states assumed control of printing and administering ballots.

The Left well understands that, if they repeat their lies often enough, eventually the lies will be believed even by conservatives, influencing and altering a nation’s values and culture.  By constantly linking slavery and the South – no matter that the North imported the slaves and sold them to the South and kept slaves even after the Civil War and that slavery was accepted worldwide at that time – the Left has been able to use slavery to divide the American people – even Southerners.

The exent to which the Left has influenced conservative opinion has had far reaching negative consequences.  The Gateway Pundit, in reporting the story, quoted another conservative media outlet: “As Randy DeSoto reported at Western Journal back in November – The last time Democrats pulled such a stunt was in the presidential election of 1860, when Republican nominee Abraham Lincoln’s name did not appear on most Southern states’ ballots.”

Christian actor Kevin Sorbo reacted to the ballot issue:  “The last presidential candidate to be removed from the ballots was Abraham Lincoln, by the democrats, because they wanted to keep their slaves.”

Founder of Family Research Council and former Under Secretary of Education under Reagan, Gary Bauer in a recent “End of Day Report” about the 14^th Amendment being used to keep Trump off the primary ballot wrote, “By the way, the last time Democrats did this to a Republican presidential candidate was in 1860, when ten Democrat slave states kept Abraham Lincoln off the ballot.”

Bauer also noted, “The ‘insurrection’ the 14th Amendment was referring to was the Civil War, in which 600,000 Americans died. Thirteen states raised an army and attempted to take control of the United States. That’s the kind of thing the 14th Amendment was intended to prevent when it comes to holding public office.”  Obviously he was referring to the 11 seceded states which did not raise an army to take control of the federal government.  The term “Civil War” is a misnomer because the seceded states did not want to take over the government, but rather to leave it and set up their own government — the Confederacy.  They were forced to fight because the Northern – federal — army illegally invaded the South that was no longer a part of the United States.

It’s imperative that conservatives learn the facts about our nation’s history and stop listening to Neocons trumpeting fake history in their quest to demonize Democrats.  Southern historian and founder of McClanahan Academy, Brion McClanahan, says that telling the truth about this “doesn’t allow them to run the South as the bogeyman thesis of American history and to virtue signal about their moral self righteousness.”

Of course, readers of the Abbeville Institute website well know that if you want to understand the real Southern tradition, you’ve come to the right place.

Carole Hornsby Haynes

Carole Hornsby Haynes, Ph.D. is an independent historian and Southerner who taught American and Southern history at the secondary and college levels. She is a national education policy analyst and legislative adviser. A classically trained pianist and organist, she loves the many genres of American music. She’s especially proud that nearly all American music is Southern in origin and identity.

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