The President issues a bold decree promulgating new civil rights for a discriminated-against minority. He is promptly met with widespread popular and political opprobrium. Cowered, he retreats. He spends the rest of the term seemingly trying to please everyone, never again taking a stand on the issue, politically calculating – doing everything possible to salvage his chances for re-election to a second term.
No, this is not the Clinton Administration in the 1990s but the Lincoln Administration in the 1860s. The issue is not a presidential order to end the prohibition against gays in the military but, rather, the limited freedom from slavery proffered by Abraham Lincoln in the Emancipation Proclamation.
