Reader-community member-watchdog-content co-creator Bob Hill of Pinecrest, Fla. writes:
Pete Wehner's op-ed referencing Lincoln's 1838 Lyceum Address appears to have confounded the two outbreaks of "mobocratic spirit" leading up to the speech. Wehner writes: "The speech was given in the aftermath of the lynching of a mixed-race boatman and the burning of a black abolitionist newspaper editor." In fact, the two incidents to which Lincoln referred were, in the first instance, the horrific burning alive of a mixed-race boatman, Francis McIntosh, in St. Louis, and, in the second, the shooting homicide, by what could be called a lynch mob, of the white abolitionist newspaper editor and Presbyterian minister, Elijah Lovejoy, across the river in Alton, Illinois. The details are covered at length in what is still the best treatment of the events, Freedom's Champion, by Paul Simon, the Democratic senator from Illinois.
I believe that Wehner is right, and that Trump would represent a marked break with the vision of Lincoln and the Founders. But if we are going to appeal to reason and history, then we have to get our facts straight.