NiNi Harris, the distinguished historian of St. Louis, in her book A Most Unsettled State: First Person Accounts of St. Louis During the Civil War provides excerpts from the journal of Louis Philip Fusz, St. Louis resident and secessionist. In the entry for 8 May 1864, Fusz denounces Lincoln for the injuries he believed Lincoln had done to the country. At the end of his list of injuries, however, Fusz corrects himself as follows: “On the moral side I was going to name the debasement of the people, their loss of the spirit of freedom, their baseness, but one thought convinces me that with the mass of Americans, he [Lincoln] is not the cause; that they themselves were in that condition for a long time past and that all their blustering and bragging about their freedom, their self respect, etc. were only loud proclamations to things they felt they possessed no more.”  I find these words distressing, for if we substitute Trump for Lincoln, Fusz is describing Americans of our time far more accurately than those of whom he was writing.