{"id":53527,"date":"2017-04-16T23:15:02","date_gmt":"2017-04-16T23:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=53527"},"modified":"2017-04-16T23:15:02","modified_gmt":"2017-04-16T23:15:02","slug":"fake-news-isnt-a-recent-problem-in-the-us-it-almost-destroyed-abraham-lincoln","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=53527","title":{"rendered":"Fake news isn\u2019t a recent problem in the US\u2014it almost destroyed Abraham Lincoln"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fake news isn\u2019t a recent problem in the US\u2014it almost destroyed Abraham Lincoln<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Quartz<\/a>
\n2016-11-28<\/p>\n

Gwynn Guilford<\/strong><\/a>, Reporter<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>
\nFake news almost brought down Honest Abe<\/a>. (Reuters\/Molly Riley)<\/em><\/small><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Abraham Lincoln<\/a> was more than just a foe of slavery. He was also a mixed-race eugenicist<\/a>, believing that the intermarriage of blacks and whites would yield an American super-race.<\/p>\n

Or at least, that\u2019s what newspapers in 1864 would have had you believe. The charge isn\u2019t true. But this miscegenation<\/a> hoax still \u201cdamn near sank Lincoln that year,\u201d says Heather Cox Richardson<\/a>, history professor at Boston College.<\/p>\n

In February 1864, Lincoln was preparing for a tough re-election campaign amidst a bloody civil war<\/a> when he and his Republican party were blindsided.<\/p>\n

The attack came from Samuel Sullivan Cox<\/a>, an Ohio <\/a>congressman from the pro-slavery Democrats, who gave a fiery speech to Congress condemning Republicans for championing the idea that whites and blacks have children together to create a new \u201cAmerican race,\u201d declaring these views<\/a> to \u201chave been a part of the gospel of abolition for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democratic papers around the country reprinted the transcript of Cox\u2019s speech. The Republicans\u2019 \u201cdisgusting theories\u201d had gone viral.<\/p>\n

Cox was citing a 72-page anonymous pamphlet titled \u201cMiscegenation: The Theory of the Blending of the American White Man and Negro<\/a>\u201d that extolled intermarriage of races and encouraged Republicans to openly endorse this philosophy by adding it to their official party platform…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abraham Lincoln was more than just a foe of slavery. He was also a mixed-race eugenicist, believing that the intermarriage of blacks and whites would yield an American super-race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,459,8,26,20],"tags":[13319,26859,26858,19497,23094,26857],"class_list":["post-53527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-history","category-media-archive","category-politics","category-usa","tag-abraham-lincoln","tag-gwynn-guilford","tag-heather-cox-richardson","tag-quartz","tag-samuel-s-cox","tag-samuel-sullivan-cox"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53528,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53527\/revisions\/53528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}