The first Republican candidate elected president was Abraham Lincoln. And Lincoln had to walk through the minefield of immigration politics as gingerly as today’s GOP contenders. Lincoln realized he would get few votes from Irish immigrants -- they were welded since Jackson’s time to “the Democracy,” as the Democrats were then known. So Lincoln was very careful not to alienate America’s second largest bloc of immigrant voters -- the Germans. For a time, Lincoln was so concerned to communicate with German-American voters, he even took German lessons. When that effort failed, he aligned with German editors and activists in the new Republican Party. Gustave Koerner was a Lincoln stalwart who helped gain the 1860 nomination for the Railsplitter in Chicago’s Wigwam. As essential as the support of Koerner and his fellow German-speakers was to Lincoln’s nomination, it was also key to Lincoln’s sweeping the electoral votes of all the Northern...(Read Full Article)