Joseph Medill Quotes
Don’t act on the defensive at all. Don’t refer to your past speeches or positions … hold Douglas up as a traitor and conspirator—a pro-slavery bamboozling demagogue.
Joseph Medill, 1823-1899, Newspaper Publisher and Abraham Lincoln campaign aide, Campaign advice to Abraham Lincoln in his 1858 Senate race against Stephan A. Douglas
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was one of the very few American politicians who could truthfully make that statement.
The nation in 1848 was very polarized over the issue of slavery. Taylor, never even mentioned the subject in his speeches and writings. He reused to answer any questions about the subject or indicate his own views. His strategy worked as the other politicians who took a stand—either way—alienated a large number of voters.
It is not only in modern times that there were “litmus tests” for appointees. Franklin Pierce had been elected as a Democrat with a coalition that included Southerners who were able to dominate the weak Pierce precluding abolitionists from any appointments.
In modern times, many have complained at the disrespectful way critics refer to the president of the United States. The long for the civility of the past. As this editorial shows, uncivil criticism of the president is nothing new.
“Waving the bloody shirt” was a term that some Southerners accused Northern post Civil War politicians of inflaming Northern public opinion by relating incidents of Northerners who wanted to help uphold the equal rights of Blacks in the South and were murdered by the Klu Klux Klan and waving a bloodstained shirt belonging to the dead martyr. There never was an incident that could be documented of actually waving a bloody shirt. But many Northern politicians related events of Southern lynchings and other assaults on Blacks and Whites who were guilty of nothing but claiming lawful rights for Negroes. Northerners who remembered the Civil War and the atrocities and war crimes of Andersonville and Quantrill’s Raiders when they heard these speeches were outraged and angry. This created much anti-Southern attitudes in the North and the West some of which exist to this day.
Accusing a candidate who opposed a particular war effort as a traitor and collaborator with the enemy in a campaign worked very well in the 2004 Presidential race where the Republicans painted John Kerry, a war hero, as a traitor and collaborator for opposing the Vietnam War. However, the Republicans had learned the dirty trick in middle of the 19th century from the Democrats when Stephen Douglas accused Abraham Lincoln of selling out his country because Lincoln had opposed the Mexican War. Just as Kerry lost, so did Lincoln in this Senate race, but Lincoln better armed to deal with the attacks, ran for the Presidency two years later.
He had invited Ted Kennedy to also give a presentation at the library, and this was part of the introduction. The President rarely “jumped” on anyone, but he was referring to the common practice of his fellow Republicans of using Kennedy as the villain in fundraising and partisan attacks.
In many respects, it is amazing that secession did not take place earlier.
The issue is whether Kansas would enter the Union as a slave state of a free state. If a free state, the free states would be able to block further slavery. If Kansas were to become a slave state, the slave states would have a sufficient majority to make all future expansion hospitable to slavery. The slavery forces started sending man and families into Kansas so that they could vote; the abolitionists did the same. Both sides armed and a war began with each faction trying to kill or drive the other faction out of Kansas before the vote. See {49978} for the pro-slavery view of Kansas
Steinbeck had been approached by Democratic political operatives (not connected with JFK) to write a novel attacking Richard Nixon. See {629629}. “Swift” referred to Jonathan Swift, the great English Satirical Writer who was greatly admired but did not achieve any political objectives.
Buchanan us considered by most historians to have been the worst or one of the worst Presidents of the United States. At this point, he was a lame duck president with Abraham Lincoln, the President Elect soon to take office. This speech, just encouraged the South more than ever and helped to bring about the Civil War. His vacillation and lack of any leadership on the slavery question exacerbated the polarization that was tearing the nation apart.
He was a speechwriter for Adlai Stevenson who wrote many of his own speeches but so many are required a modern president and candidate must have speechwriters.
Joseph Medill was a Canadian-American newspaper editor, publisher, and Republican Party politician. He was co-owner and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune, and he was Mayor of Chicago from after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 until 1873.
