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The Town That Got Away With Murder and Other Largely Forgotten Historic Events

Khalid Elhassan November 23, 2019 33 min

18. Abraham the Red?

The Civil War overshadowed all that Abraham Lincoln said and did, but America’s sixteenth president was extraordinary for reasons beyond his wartime leadership. Republicans have traditionally been pro-business, and the GOP has usually been a reliable ally of employers in disputes with labor unions and employees. Surprisingly, however, the party’s first president had some views that could qualify him as a Marxist.

In his first speech as an Illinois state legislator in 1837, Abraham Lincoln stated: “These capitalists generally act harmoniously and in concert, to fleece the people“. Contra the conventional wisdom that people become more conservative the older they get, Lincoln’s views drifted ever closer to Marx as he aged. He was never a communist, but some of what he said and wrote would cause consternation in the US Chamber of Commerce.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.