alt.education

Wide Eyed in Wonder wrote:
>I'd say Lincoln was a social conservative,

Lincoln was a flaming liberal. The only thing he was conservative
about was preserving the Union.

In 1860 the Democrats were the extreme conservative party, and the
Republicans were the liberals. This situation continued until the
early years of the 20th century, when the Republicans splintered, and
later rebuilt itself as a pro-business party. As late as the 1960s,
the South, the bastion of social conservativism, was solidly
Democratic.

You do realize that "conservative" means "opposed to change", don't
you? Eliminating slavery was not "conservative"; it was forcing
change on a South that did not want that change.

That being said, Lincoln was opposed to slavery, but he was not so
extreme as to desire to eliminate slavery by national policy. The
Emancipation Proclamation was a limited military measure, and it did
not in fact eliminate slavery in those areas then under Union control.
The party that he led however was dominated by people who were radical
liberals.

lojbab