Editor,
Mr. Wilferth is, as ever, grammatically correct, but neither honest with facts nor logically coherent (“Lincoln was not devoted to ending slavery,” Nov. 5).
The aristocratic, slave-holding leaders of the Confederacy knew what Lincoln thought of slavery: “I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery isn’t wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember I when I did not so think, and feel.” That’s why they tried to assassinate him before he could take office, and why some states seceded soon after his election. They also knew that he defended runaway slaves in court, and that the Republican Party was then the most anti-slavery of the three parties.
Lincoln did put the Union first, as Mr. Wilferth wrote, as a rock-solid personal belief, and as a tactic: Lincoln knew that he had won without a majority of the vote, that the nation was divided on the issue (and wouldn’t countenance a war over slaves), and that he needed as many states as possible to remain within the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation had to wait until a majority of people on the Union side had come to believe slavery was the cause of the war, and that slavery should go once and for all. I doubt that any MAGA president at the time would have done as much.
Yes, many of us are in “fear of what he (Trump) is capable of doing.” And for good reason. But Mr. Wilferth’s paragraph on Democrats is so bizarre and vague that no response is possible: as usual, all charges, and no specifics.
I ask yet again that Mr. Wilferth explain to us what good things Trump/MAGA is doing or wants to do for us. So far, he’s demolished part of the White House and the entire Rose Garden (because he felt like it); accepted a jet that we will pay a billion dollars to convert and that he will keep; pardoned convicted criminals after receiving bribes to do so (and he doesn’t, by his own admission on 60 Minutes, even know who they all are); allowed the export of the most advanced AI chips the United Arab Emirates, after they bought at least a billion dollars of worthless Trump crypto currency. Once a huckster criminal, always a huckster criminal. I pass over the secret police called ICE, for the moment.
Mr. Wilferth is, sadly, that annoyed pig that refuses to learn how to sing, happy to grunt in the dark and blinding mud.
The absolute least Mr. Wilferth and all the MAGA letter writers could do, since they are grownups, is to stop fulminating, and list all those good things Trump is doing. And demand that Trump release the Epstein files. I doubt the MAGA cult members will do that. I’m sure they know what’s in them but let’s all withhold judgment on that until the files are released.
Do we have some common ground, Mr. Wilferth, in calling for the release for the Epstein files? And to let the chips fall where they may?
John Seyfried
Bayview
