Portside

Reader Comments - Fast Food Strike, Low-Wage Workers Struggle for More than Wages; TPP - LAtest Leak; Hillary Clinton, Fracking and 2016; Eduardo Galeano; CIA Infiltration at Home; Anne Braden; Sundown Towns; 'Driving While White'; Cuba Coops; NYT and Russian Wages; Charter Schools; Walton Wealth; Announcements: Walden Bello in New York; Vietnam - The Power of Protest and In Defense of the Public Square - Washington

We may try to hedge our descriptions, bring Lincoln into perspective, call him a pragmatist and cut him down to a size more comfortably proportioned to our own. The truth is almost too great for us to recognize. He staked the future of the republic on his commitment to put slavery on the course of ultimate extinction.

During the Civil War, strikers and other workers with grievances found a sympathetic ear in the White House and a willingness to use what Lincoln saw as the limited power of his office to allow for a fair contest in disputes between labor and management...