Abraham Africanus I

This is a true and accurate copy of the original historic pamphlet. It has not be edited or altered in any fashion. It may seem bizarre and you may question why it was written and formatted in this fashion. Those are good questions which no one can answer, except to say this was the style of writing in the 1860s and it made perfect sense at the time. In the 1860s there was a group of Democrats mostly in Illinois, who vehemently opposed the civil war and despised President Abraham Lincoln's actions to free the slaves. They were known as the Copperheads. They were against what they claimed was Lincoln's war to prevent secession of the southern states and they were highly distressed at the economic damage the Civil War was causing to the Southern states. They also detested President Lincoln for declaring martial law and suspending habeas corpus. The final blow for many Democrats was Lincoln's Proclamation emancipating the slaves. This exceedingly rare pamphlet printed and distributed by Democrats in an effort to damage President Abraham Lincoln; depicts him making a contract with the Devil to be anointed the King of the United States. This pamphlet provides a rare opportunity to read and understand cutting political satire at a time when the country was being reduced to bloody fragments and faced the very real possibility of disintegrating the Union. Today, the vast majority do not realize that Lincoln was a Republican and the forces who desired to maintain slavery were the primarily southern Democrats.