storiesofhistory

[storiesofhistory]

Kylo has a Valentine’s Day letter for Rey. She isn’t so amused.

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Here are some valentines for your boo

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Happy V-day.

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ValentinesDay

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The History of Che Guevara

On October 9, 1967, Ernesto “Che” Guevara was executed (in Bolivia, of all places) while trying to incite a revolution. Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly. For those who don’t recognize the name, Che Guevara is the guy you’ve seen from this T-shirt:

He did more than just lend his face to a poster hanging up in some stoner white kid’s dorm room. He was a Marxist revolutionary in Argentina. Marxism means he was really into the musical stylings of Richard Marx.

Kidding. Wouldn’t that be so rad if it was, though?

Che wanted to “hold on to the night” by promoting Marxism, a method of socioeconomic theory that’s basically, “fuck capitalism, we want a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership and, you know, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Che was the eldest of five children in an Argentinian family with Irish heritage. Go figure. He was a very smart kid, playing in chess tournaments and being incredibly well-read - Sartre and Kafka and Whitman and Camus and Vallejo were some of his favorite authors when he was a kid. Later on as an adult, the CIA would write “fairly intellectual for a Latino” in his secret file, which is “fairly derogatory” for a government agency.

As a young man, he wanted to explore the world around him, so he took a motorcycle trip all through South America. This was no short trip, it was over 5000 miles and nine months, in which he was exposed to all sorts of living conditions and poverty. 

Che: Whoa, why are you so poor when you’re working so hard in these copper mines?

Poor people: because the capitalists take all the money from the copper we dig up and don’t give us any.

Che: None of it?

Poor people: we don’t even have a blanket. We’re at the fucking bottom of Argentina. We could spit and hit Antarctica, if we had enough water to spit with. IT’S COLD, OKAY?

Che: I think I know how I’m gonna help you guys out.

Poor people: You have a blanket you’re gonna give us?

Che: No, I’m gonna write a book about this and my travels.

Poor people: yeah have fun with that, fucker

He wrote The Motorcycle Diaries, and then worked in medicine. But he saw so many people living in extreme poverty who could not afford medical treatment, to the point where the death of a child to an easily curable/preventable disease was seen as a normal thing in a poor family. So he said fuck this shit, it’s time for a revolution. After some struggles and success in Guatemala with the United Fruit Company, he meant Fidel Castro. 

Castro: Hey. I’m gonna overthrow the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship in Cuba.

Che: Cool!

Castro: He’s a puppet of the United States, and their American controlled conglomerates do nothing but install and support oppressive regimes around the world to control everyone.

Che: That’s pretty rad. I will come with your people on an assault on Batista’s military in this leaky old boat you stole from some guy. But, I’m just there to help with my box of medical supplies, okay?

People: (die horribly in this attack)

Che: oh fuck this shit. This medical box is too heavy, gimme some guns

Che and the resistance, including Castro, hung out in the jungle for a bit undercover. This time really sucked for Che - morale was low, supplies were low, but worst of all, he was really allergic to mosquitos. Like, big ass golfball sized welts from every bite. And he’s hiding in a fucking jungle. That’s gotta suck. Castro promoted him to second-in-command, maybe because he looked super badass covered in welts? Or because Che was starting to get a reputation as a hardcore rebel. If a rebel tried to leave the camp? Che killed them. If anyone was accused of deceit or treason or spying or lying... bullet in the head, courtesy of Che. But the other soldiers liked him when he wasn’t killing people, because he would read stories to them. Anyway, this fighting against Batista’s regime lasted over two years, and a lot of people died on both sides. When it was done, Che celebrated by having a super harsh asthma attack.

Castro: My boy Che is GOOD, he is my main man in all things, okay?

Che: damn right

While in the favor of Castro, Che travelled the world and spoke out against the U.S. and capitalist governments, calling out hypocrisy like the U.S. calling itself a democracy when it also held institutions such as the Ku Klux Klan, systematic discrimination and financial oligarchy (OH SNAP). But he also enjoyed the fame, going fishing with Ernest Hemingway and speaking in front of the United Nations to say “fuck yo couch.” 

Castro and Che started to have issues, like Guevera saying “fuck the Soviets” and Castro saying “yeah, I know, but we kind of need to partner with them for the success of our movement” and Che was all, “oh yeah well FUCK THEM because they’re not REAL Marxists” and Castro was all, “oh no everybody, Che suddenly disappeared for a while and no one can talk to him, and PS here’s this totally legit letter of resignation he wrote to me that supports me as leader, yaaaay...” 

So Che and Castro were like, never, ever, ever getting back together, but Che didn’t die. He went to Africa, at first to fight their cause (to the death!) to liberate their people from an oppressive regime, but then when he saw that nobody was really feeling that fight, he burned all the villages down and left. Then he went back to Cuba in secret and hid from Castro.

Castro: Wait what’s your name?

Che: Bay. Bay Boobearea.

Castro: You look familiar...

Che: OK I’ll dye my hair gray and shave off my beard and go to Bolivia so no one can find me.��

He started an army in Bolivia but during a raid, he was captured. He told the soldiers, “Don’t shoot! I’m Che Guevera and I am worth more to you alive than dead.” Then they tied him up in a chair and gave him a pipe to smoke, and from the chair Che kicked his captors against the wall LIKE A BOSS and spit in their faces. He didn’t escape, but he still gets points for some very Jack Bauer-like behavior. Eventually, his captors said “fuck this, let’s kill him.” But first they lifted him up and took pictures with him, like a prop. Eventually, he was shot 9 times by one man to kill him - none of the shots being in the head, because the Bolivian government wanted to tell people Che died during an escape attempt. Also, one of the Bolivians stole his watch. Rude. Then they cut off his hands, soaked him in formaldehyde, and shipped him to Cuba, like “here, you take him.”

U.S. Memo to President Lyndon Johnson: Well the Bolivians just killed Che Guevara which was totally stupid but I guess I understand it, whatever

Castro: Che was like THE NICEST GUY you don’t even know, okay? I freaking loved him, you wish your children were as good as him

People in the lovely golden haze of hindsight: I mean, I knew Che killed a lot of people and was really mean to his workers because he didn’t believe in giving anyone more money even when his workers were poor, and Castro thought he was getting too big for his britches, but you know what? I LIKED THE GUY.

Other people: I heard he once saved an orphanage full of children from bears!

More other people: I heard he drove all the way to the Southern tip of Argentina to give this poor dude a blanket!

More people: I heard he once got busy in a Burger King bathroom!

And so, Che Guevara’s legend status was born. Not long after his death, some college students in the United States in 1968 said, “Che Guevara fought against injustice, and we totally see injustice in this world, so we’re gonna wear his face on a T-shirt,” and THERE YOU GO. 

Che Guevara. Some people love him. Some people hate him. Some people remember that Antonio Banderas played him in the movie version of the musical “Evita”, and are astounded that Che and Eva Peron actually had nothing to do with each other. 

[storiesofhistory]

The History of the Confederate Flag (PS take it down, South Carolina)

Today on the radio, I heard an interview with several South Carolina natives (disclosure: I live in Charlotte, NC - a few minutes from SC’s borders) who supported the Confederate flag and wanted it to stay flying in front of the South Carolina statehouse. Every supporting argument given cited “heritage”, and one person even said, “It’s a reminder of our heritage of the Civil War. It has nothing to do with black people.”

There are also those who are questioning whether the Civil War was ACTUALLY about slavery - they try to reimagine it as some sort of exercise of free will and human rights, with Southern states saying “don’t tread on me!” to an oppressive federal government. Or they imagine themselves flipping the bird at Northern liberals while doing a jump in the General Lee, because they’re just some good ol’ boys, never meaning no harm...

This is bullshit. The Civil War was about slavery. And you can read it in EVERY STATEMENT BY THE STATES WHO SECEDED.

Followers of this blog know that the Civil War wasn’t exactly fought over rainbows and ponies, but because one group of states (including South Carolina) decided that their “God-given rights” to own African slaves as property were being infringed upon by the United States government and that mean ol’ Abraham Lincoln. 

In 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens, gave the “Cornerstone Speech” in 1861 which laid out the fundamental beliefs of the Confederacy: “Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.”

In short, the Confederacy believed “whites rule, slaves drool, goooooo racism!”

So anyone actually saying that the Civil War was not fought over slavery needs to either check themselves for signs of a stroke or realize that the benefits of white supremacy are so ingrained that they’re actually arguing that a war over the rights of black people was not about black people. 

But you know what, I’m here to talk about the Confederate Flag. And how it’s bullshit and should be taken down from South Carolina’s state house.

First of all, that flag wasn’t even the real flag of the Confederacy. It was General Lee’s battle flag of Northern Virginia, so save your shit about heritage, South Carolina. It was submitted to be the flag of the Confederacy and rejected in 1861, and there were 3 iterations of the actual official Confederate flag. None of them being what is now commonly referred to as the “Dixie” or “Rebel” flag. Oh, and after the Confederacy surrendered? Robert E. Lee himself wished to distance himself from it and all symbols of the Confederacy. 

Second, it wasn’t even the flag South Carolina used. South Carolina had designed their own secessionist flag when they said “fuck this noise about taking away our human rights to deprive other humans of their rights...we’re leaving the Union!” And their flag wasn’t even close to the “Dixie” flag. 

Perhaps the “Dixie” Confederate flag stuck with South Carolina because the guy who designed it was from South Carolina. William Porcher Miles from SC chaired the Confederate’s Committee on the Flag and Seal. 

Confederacy: let’s base our flag on the American flag because it still represents the independence and prosperity of a great country, and we can identify with that

Miles: WHAT no, the American flag is a flag of tyranny. You want those symbols so bad, keep the colors and stars but put the stripes in an X like this (submits design)

Confederacy: it looks like a pair of suspenders for fuck’s sake Miles

Miles: shut up I bet our troops will love it, let’s put it in battle

“Dixie” flag in battle: (gets fired upon by its own Confederate troops because when the wind wasn’t blowing, it looked too much like the Union flag)

Miles: oops well at least the Jewish people I designed it with liked it

White Supremacy Groups, including the KKK, who still use the “Dixie” flag: WHAT?!?

Anyway, the “Dixie” flag is the one flown in front of South Carolina’s State House today as a symbol of the South’s “heritage.” But this flag only became widely associated with the South AFTER they lost the Civil War. 

The “Dixie” flag began showing up in World War II after the Battle of Okinawa by celebrating Southern American soldiers (who were told to put it away, for fuck’s sake, by General Buckner - he himself the son of a Confederate general - because it was inappropriate - “ Americans from all over are involved in this battle.”) 

The real widespread post-war usage started with Strom Thurmond, a racist piece of shit from South Carolina who ran for president in 1948 under a new party called the “States Rights Party”, a.k.a. “The Dixiecrats” (worst band name ever). That political party’s platform was clear about its feelings of civil rights: Article 4 of their party platform states, “We stand for the segregation of the races.” He flew “Dixie” Confederate flags at every party stop so everyone associated THAT flag with the Civil War and the Confederacy. He lost the presidency but served for 48 years as South Carolina’s senator - first as a Democrat, then switching sides to Republican because he so vehemently detested the civil rights movement (the “final straw” was the 1964 Civil Rights Act) and remained a human hemorrhoid in the American government until his death in 2003. (And guess what: his son just called for the removal of the flag. Suck on that heritage.)

In 1961, the South Carolina legislature (including ol’ Strom) decided that they would fly the “Dixie” flag in front of the state capitol to commemorate the official start of the Civil War 100 years prior with the Battle of Fort Sumter (in South Carolina). Funny how this came as the civil rights movement in America was reaching a fever pitch.

American Civil Rights Movement: It’s 1961 and the last few years have been CRAZY. We’ve got Brown v. the Board of Education, President Kennedy signing Executive Order 10925 to prohibit race discrimination in federal government, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission started. The famous sit-in at Woolworth’s happened last year and it’s been about 6 years since Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat, and this preacher and activist Dr. King is really gaining momentum. But we have a long way to go before our cause is done.

South Carolina Legislature: FUCK YOUR CAUSE (plants what they think is the Confederate flag but is not actually the Confederate flag)

American Civil Rights Movement: That’s really offensive, you know. You’re flying a flag that was used in a war that was fought over the rights of white people to own black people.

South Carolina Legislature: NO it’s about heritage!

White Supremacy Groups with “Heritage” in their name: LOL yeah good one, high five

This argument has repeated ad nauseum for 53 fucking years and counting, with a pit-stop in a fictional Georgia county for the Dukes of Hazzard which made lots of white people believe the “Dixie” was associated with good ol’ boys culture instead of an incredibly bloody war fought over the desire to systematically oppress an entire race of humans that they lost anyway.)

Confederate flag supporters: it’s not our fault white supremacy groups use the flag as one of their symbols. We just want to remember our heritage.

Hindus, Buddhists, Jainism: Well it’s not our fault that Hitler used our gammadion cross, a sacred symbol in our religions, as a swastika to represent the Nazi party but virtually all of the Western world still associates our sacred symbol as one of hate

White Supremacy Groups with or without “Heritage” in their name: fuck yeah we do - the swastika and the Confederate flag are shown together in like, ALL our white people stuff

(Showing once again, every argument on the Internet always ends up pointing fingers at Hitler)

In conclusion, the Dukes of Hazzard aren’t real and neither are South Carolina’s “heritage” ties to the “Dixie” flag. It’s a symbol that has always represented “white power” and will always have that connotation. It doesn’t even have the benefit of originally being a symbol for something else, like the swastika or the word “faggot”, but guess what - they’re all wildly inappropriate now and are generally seen as a tool of the bigoted mind.

In other words, you can’t fly a racist flag and be butt-hurt when people think you’re racist. It’s been 150 years since the end of the Civil War (1865)  and the Confederate states’ return to the Union. The South will not “rise again” especially when those calling for it can’t even get the fucking flag right.

South Carolina should take the flag down because:

1. It’s a symbol of the bombastic concept of white supremacy and the millions of slaves who suffered under it (let alone everyone still suffering under it)

2. It wasn’t even the flag of the Confederacy, or even the Confederacy in South Carolina

3. Because 926 (and growing) recognized white supremacist groups exist in America and happily use the Confederate flag as a symbol of their own pride. Because murderers casually drape themselves in the flag and post pictures on Facebook before setting out to slaughter innocent people. Because the flag never represented anything good or worthy of celebration - so stop celebrating it, South Carolina.

[storiesofhistory]

Only when you may be in the possession of the Declaration of Independence. 

Wow, I got my first anon hate. Didn’t know archaeologists had such strong defenders.

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Black History Month!

My favorite parts of history (as might be obvious from my choice of subject matter when making books) are the ones that fall into easily-categorized genres, genres with associated visual iconographies. This is the sort of stuff I loved as a kid: pirates, knights, cowboys, explorers, romans and Egyptians and flying aces. Stuff you could find featured in a bag of toys or a generic costume. For Black History Month, I thought I might visit some of these adventure-leaning periods and pick a few historic black people from those eras to draw, just for fun. If you’re doing a project or report in school this month, you could do worse than to tackle one of these toughies.  Feel free to share some of these with youngsters that you know.  And call them youngsters, they LOVE that.

Read More

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I'll help you learn. It's easy!

1. You make illogical, asinine conclusions that I'm in any way defending a murderer AND make fun of a gif usage despite the fact that this is Tumblr and snarky or silly gifs are pretty much our bread and butter here (sort of like complaining about people 'liking' your status on Facebook).

2. Then, avoid reading what was actually written or checking the sources.

3. Be sure to use multiple typos when asking why someone should take someone else's words seriously.

3. Don't forget to call me a bitch in the tags.

You're welcome!

allthingslincoln reblogged your post PS History Bonus and added:

Sure - and this is the reason, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected to office with an unprecedented lead by more than 400,000 popular votes. Lincoln was SO unpopular that, in the midst...

[storiesofhistory]

PS History Bonus

Did you guys know that Abraham Lincoln's father-in-law owned slaves?

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I may be blowing up karnythia's #HistoricPOC  on Twitter this morning….I’d love to see more 20th century history there (so I can learn more)!

You can always read more about:

Alexander Pushkin

Chien-Shiung Wu

Raden Saleh

Général Thomas Alexandre Dumas

Ira Aldridge

here, too!

[storiesofhistory]

Let's be honest, if there was ever a President who would have been a vampire hunter, it would have been Teddy Roosevelt.

Also, Lincoln preferred to hunt El Chupacabra. Duh.

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Reblog because I got so pissed, I put it on the wrong blog. Also, I really want some tacos now.

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storiesofhistory:

I am not personally putting down Lincoln as a man, politician, or President. I’m saying many people did not like him when he was in office. It was after his death and the passage of time and acceptance that hey, maybe slavery IS pretty shitty that he became so widely lauded....

THANK YOU. TONS of people who are considered to be great, influential historical figures today were not well-received in their own time. In doing these history posts, I look for sources either directly from or that reference quotes and publications from the time of the event, not a history book written years later with the sheen of nostalgia and 20/20 hindsight (not that those don't have their place as well).

However, I do feel much better now that I've seen the blog that gave me the most shit last night. It's a vampire role-play blog with an Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter theme. Obviously since I didn't cite that as a documentary, I must not know shit about shit.

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UGH

I am not personally putting down Lincoln as a man, politician, or President. I'm saying many people did not like him when he was in office. It was after his death and the passage of time and acceptance that hey, maybe slavery IS pretty shitty that he became so widely lauded. I am not defending the actions of John Wilkes Booth (are you fucking kidding me with that one?!?) If you're saying I'm "too stupid" to read or (my favorite) "a WAIST of time", then get the fuck off my blog and go mouth-breathe somewhere else.

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allthingslincoln reblogged your post PS History Bonus and added:

Sure - and this is the reason, Abraham Lincoln was re-elected to office with an unprecedented lead by more than 400,000 popular votes. Lincoln was SO unpopular that, in the midst of the bloodiest Civil War, out of the 40,247 army votes cast, he received 30,503 (75.8%) – that was basically people who had the choice between voting for McClellan (End the war, get everybody home) and Lincoln (Get shot at for who knows how long). He was SO INCREDIBLY UNPOPULAR that he won all but three of the participating states in the election And let’s not forget the ultimate proof how unpopular Lincoln was – he was only the first President to be re-elected since Andrew Jackson in 1832. Seriously, guys, read the history books ALL THE WAY TO THE END before you make a post on tumblr while foaming at the mouth!

YISSSS LET'S DO THIS because Presidents who are assassinated MUST BE UNIVERSALLY BELOVED. Presidents whose election into their first term in office spur South Carolina, one of the original 13 colonies, to secede from the Union, WERE OBVIOUSLY TREASURED IN OFFICE. 

Re: his re-election - You forget that on September 6, 1864 (2 months before the election), General Sherman took Atlanta and the tides turned to favor the Union army. Once that victory happened, even McClellan supported continuing and winning the war. You could compare it to the capture and kill of Bin Laden, only happening 2 months before President Obama's re-election.

But okay, I see you think I read half a book and decided to share a little story about Abraham Lincoln. I actually have read whole books (even without pictures), many of them, and used 14 different sources in my last post about Abraham Lincoln (lesson learned, gonna cite my sources in posts moving forward). So here's some examples. If you disagree, take it up with the sources. Here are examples from Abraham Lincoln's papers in the Library of Congress (I know, it sounds like a shady-ass source, but try to read it ALL THE WAY TO THE END)

Senator J.W. Alden wrote to George Thompson "Ten reasons why Abraham Lincoln should not be elected President of the United States for a second term."

Publisher/Republican politician (Abe's own party) Thurlow Weed wrote to William H. Seward (Abe's own Secretary of State), 

"Ten or eleven days since, I told Mr Lincoln that his re-election was an impossibity.... The People are wild for Peace. They are told that the President will only listen to terms of Peace on condition Slavery be 'abandoned.'"

The editor of the New York Times, Henry J. Raymond, wrote to Lincoln to beg him to make a peace offer with Confederacy President Jefferson Davis,

"If the proffer were accepted (which I presume it would not be,) the country would never consent to place the practical execution of its details in any but loyal hands, and in those we should be safe. If it should be rejected, (as it would be,) it would plant seeds of disaffection in the South, dispel all the delusions about peace that previal in the North, silence the clamorous & damaging falsehoods of the opposition, take the wind completely out of the sails of the Chicago craft, reconcile public sentiment to the War, the draft, & the tax as inevitable necessities, and unite the North as nothing since firing on Fort Sumter has hitherto done."

Hell, let's go to his first election (which had an assassination attempt - BECAUSE HE WAS SO POPULAR). Here's a quote from The Salem Advocate in 1861, a newspaper in Lincoln's home state of Illinois:

"The illustrious Honest Old Abe has continued during the last week to make a fool of himself and to mortify and shame the intelligent people of this great nation. His speeches have demonstrated the fact that although originally a Herculean rail splitter and more lately a whimsical story teller and side splitter, he is no more capable of becoming a statesman, nay, even a moderate one, than the braying ass can become a noble lion. People now marvel how it came to pass that Mr. Lincoln should have been selected as the representative man of any party. His weak, wishy-washy, namby-pamby efforts, imbecile in matter, disgusting in manner, have made us the laughing stock of the whole world. The European powers will despise us because we have no better material out of which to make a President. The truth is, Lincoln is only a moderate lawyer and in the larger cities of the Union could pass for no more than a facetious pettifogger. Take him from his vocation and he loses even these small characteristics and indulges in simple twaddle which would disgrace a well bred school boy."

Lincoln won the presidency in 1860 with 39.8% of the popular vote - the lowest showing of any presidential candidate in history (though it must be noted that there were 4 Presidential candidates splitting up the votes). By the time he was sworn in just a few months later, Henry Adams publicly observed that "not a third of the House supported him." The New York Herald published that only 1 million of the 4.7 million who voted for him (again, only a few months before) still supported him. 

Why the change? Because after he was elected, South Carolina quickly seceded and the country fell into Civil War. Political influencers in the East considered him weak and inadequate. The South obviously hated him and called him an interloper (among other words), and citizens across the country who were fed up with a mis-managed, seemingly corrupt government considered him a figurehead for everything that was wrong. 

In his first eighteen months in office, his management of the country and war effort was seen as inadequate and inexperienced. It wasn't until the Emancipation Proclamation that any sort of definitive management seemed to emerge, except TONS OF PEOPLE hated the Emancipation Proclamation. The Chicago Times called it:

"a monstrous usurpation, a criminal wrong, and an act of national suicide."

The Crisis, an editorial in Ohio:

"Is not this a Death Blow to the Hope of Union? We have no doubt that this Proclamation seals the fate of this Union as it was and the Constitution as it is.… The time is brief when we shall have a DICTATOR PROCLAIMED, for the Proclamation can never be carried out except under the iron rule of the worst kind of despotism."

A New York Herald reporter who was spending time with the Union Army reported with word from the troops:

"The army is dissatisfied and the air is thick with revolution.... God knows what will be the consequence, but at present matters look dark indeed, and there is large promise of a fearful revolution which will sweep before it not only the administration but popular government."

By the time the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, Lincoln was hated again, even by abolitionists! They thought the E.P. (I'm tired of typing) was completely impotent. Congressman A. G. Riddle of Ohio wrote that, in late February, the "criticism, reflection, reproach, and condemnation" of Lincoln in Congress was so complete that there were only two men in the House who defended him: Isaac Arnold of Illinois and Riddle himself. A quote from author and lawyer Richard Henry Dana:

"As to the politics of Washington, the most striking thing is the absence of personal loyalty to the President. It does not exist. He has no admirers, no enthusiastic supporters, none to bet on his head. If a Republican convention were to be held to-morrow, he would not get the vote of a State."

In the wake of the E.P. and Draft Law, riots broke out in New York City. Many Northerners decided to "wait and see" for the 1864 campaign. Ulysses S. Grant was a favorite until news spread of his Overland Campaign, a series of battles that resulted in massive casualties for the Union and even Grant himself said was "a stupendous failure." Lincoln got the Republican Party nomination only because he stacked the party's convention voters with those he appointed to their current jobs - a.k.a. they kind of owed him a vote. 

McClellan was the Democratic Party vote and was popular, using the slogan, "The War is a Failure. Peace Now!" which actually offended quite a few Northerners who didn't appreciate the efforts of their sons and fathers on the battle lines being called a failure. But he STILL COULD HAVE WON if not for a 6 word telegram from Major General Sherman:

"Atlanta is ours and fairly won."

Suddenly, the Union (and the President behind it) was the SHIT. Senator Zachary Chandler called it:

"the most extraordinary change in publick opinion here that ever was known within a week."

In September and October before the election, more Union victories followed in Shenandoah Valley. AND YET Lincoln garnered only 55% of the popular vote. It was really the electoral votes that got him in. In fact, a shift of 38,111 individual ballots in just a few key states - less than 1% of the popular vote - would have given McClellan the victory.

Even during the election, people said they were voting for the Union's victory, not for Lincoln himself.

"No man was ever elected to an important office who will get so many unwilling and indifferent votes as L[incoln]. The cause takes the man along."

Ohio Rep. Lewis D. Campbell, Republican Party member:

"Nothing but the undying attachment of our people to the Union has saved us from terrible disaster. Mr. Lincoln's popularity had nothing to do with it."

Rep. Henry Winter Davis insisted that people had voted for Lincoln only "to keep out worse people — keeping their hands on the pit of the stomach the while!" He called Lincoln's reelection "the subordination of disgust to the necessities of a crisis."

Lincoln was the victim of 2 assassination attempts during his presidency and, of course, one assassination success. The fact that he was murdered on Good Friday, leading pastors (who had been critiquing him for the past four years) to rewrite their Easter sermons to portray him as a martyr, certainly helped the radical shift in thinking about Lincoln's legacy.

Let's also remember that John Wilkes Booth killed Lincoln, fully expecting the entire nation to thank him and consider him a hero.

BUT OMG YOU'RE RIGHT, HE WAS SO POPULAR, OKAY

Source and Source and Source