Also, the Whigs couldn't apply their founding principles to new circumstances because the Whigs didn't have any founding principles. There were principled Whigs and a Whig agenda, but there was no agreed set of Whig principles. eg, the party's embarrassed incoherence on slavery.https://twitter.com/NateBell4AR/status/1152217017405100033 …
Hence, Lincoln's willingness to bite his tongue - which he privately admitted doing - about their deplorable nativist attitudes in order to build a coalition on areas of agreement drawn from the party's first principles. That's my point.
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Ok—I just wanted it made explicit that the Know Nothings were a mixed bag and there was space for them to work with Lincoln.
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Indeed. Mixed bags and how to work them into the party without watering its principles down to nothing has been an issue Republicans have been wrestling with since the 1850s.
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