YOU'RE GOING TO WIN COMFORTABLY, YOU DON'T NEED TO APPEAL TO THE CONSERVATIVE FACTION
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Explanation: Abraham Lincoln, a leading antislavery advocate and president during the US Civil War, chose a Southern Unionist - a man from the South who had chosen to side with the North during the Civil War - as his VP - one Andrew Johnson. Unfortunately, Andrew Johnson was a cad utterly devoid of redeeming qualities other than the fact that he was the only Southern Congresscritter from a 'seceded' state to remain loyal to the Union. Unfortunately, with politics being very tribal, that was not nothing in electoral considerations. Lincoln, during the 1864 election, was uncertain of his popularity, and up to the last metaphorical minutes of the election, was deeply concerned that he would be defeated and the prosecution of the war handed over to incompetents.
It's hard to read anything other than naked opportunism in choosing Johnson as VP - especially as the official Union Party platform had become even more radical on civil rights than the Republican Party's previous platform. Fire up the base and simultaneously offer an olive branch to the conservatives. Lincoln won the '64 election pretty comfortably, and it's likely that he didn't need to appoint Johnson as VP - who would have been a nonentity, except that Lincoln was assassinated shortly after the Civil War ended, putting Johnson into power during one of the most important eras of American history.
Fuck Johnson and his whole Southern bootlicking white supremacist ideology.
Explanation: Abraham Lincoln, a leading antislavery advocate and president during the US Civil War, chose a Southern Unionist - a man from the South who had chosen to side with the North during the Civil War - as his VP - one Andrew Johnson. Unfortunately, Andrew Johnson was a cad utterly devoid of redeeming qualities other than the fact that he was the only Southern Congresscritter from a 'seceded' state to remain loyal to the Union. Unfortunately, with politics being very tribal, that was not nothing in electoral considerations. Lincoln, during the 1864 election, was uncertain of his popularity, and up to the last metaphorical minutes of the election, was deeply concerned that he would be defeated and the prosecution of the war handed over to incompetents.
It's hard to read anything other than naked opportunism in choosing Johnson as VP - especially as the official Union Party platform had become even more radical on civil rights than the Republican Party's previous platform. Fire up the base and simultaneously offer an olive branch to the conservatives. Lincoln won the '64 election pretty comfortably, and it's likely that he didn't need to appoint Johnson as VP - who would have been a nonentity, except that Lincoln was assassinated shortly after the Civil War ended, putting Johnson into power during one of the most important eras of American history.
Fuck Johnson and his whole Southern bootlicking white supremacist ideology.