What Would Abraham Lincoln Think?

Proposition 187 architect Harold Ezell purports to be a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln (“Rage and Raves,” Jan. 11). This is the same Lincoln who opposed not only slavery, but the anti-immigrant Know Nothings of his day, despite their protestations of patriotic intent to save the nation from foreigners.

“Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid,” Lincoln wrote in 1855. “As a nation we began by declaring that, ‘All men are created equal.’ . . . When the Know Nothings get control, it will read, ‘All men are created equal, except Negroes and foreigners and Catholics.’ When it comes to this, I shall prefer immigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty--to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure and without the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

I fear if Lincoln were around today, Ezell would offer his hero a one-way ticket.

HAROLD BRACKMAN

San Diego