“Yes, but how much good will it do?” Flora could not hide her bitterness. “The Democrats have such a majority, they can do as they please.”

Blackford shrugged. “We do what we can. Lincoln didn’t quote the Scripture that says, ‘As your Father in heaven is perfect, be ye also perfect,’ because he wanted people to truly be perfect. He wanted them to do their best.”

“Yes,” Flora said, and no more. Blackford’s comment went over less well than he’d no doubt intended. For one thing, the Scripture Lincoln had quoted was not Flora’s. And, for another, while Lincoln had made the Socialist Party in the USA strong by bringing in his wing of the Republicans after the fiasco of the Second Mexican War, Socialism in New York City stayed closer to its Marxist roots than was true in most of the country.

Blackford said, “I met Lincoln once-more than thirty-five years ago, it was.”

“Did you?” Now Flora put more interest in her voice. Whether or not she agreed with all of Lincoln’s positions, without him the Socialists likely would have remained a splinter group instead of overtaking the Republicans as the chief opposition to the Democratic Party.

He nodded. “It changed my life. I’d been mining in Montana, with no better luck than most. I was taking the train back to Dakota to farm with my kin, and I happened to have the seat next to his. We talked for hours, till I came to my stop and got off. He opened my eyes, Miss Hamburger. Without him, I never would have thought to read law or go into politics. I’d still be trying to coax wheat out of the ground out West.”

“He inspired a lot of people,” Flora said. After losing the War of Secession and having to yield independence to the Confederate States, he’d inspired a lot of people to hate him, too.