Lincoln, Abraham
1861–1865

Lincoln's 1855 letter to Joshua Speed denouncing the Know-Nothings ('When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read all men are created equal, except negroes, foreigners, and Catholics') is the founding anti-nativist Republican text; his Second Inaugural's 'with malice toward none' is the founding pluralist conclusion. Abbott's ending of in-state tuition for ~18,500 undocumented students, dismantling DACA-related driver's licenses for refugees and asylees, and Operation Lone Star posture run hard against the 1855 Lincoln. Hinojosa's published defense of long-resident immigrants ('hardworking and law-abiding, not criminals') and her constitutional-process insistence sit closer to Lincoln's framework. On the Union-preservation strand, neither candidate is in a literal secession-era moment, but Hinojosa's procedural quorum tactics defending against a partisan gerrymander track more closely to Lincoln's institutional-process discipline than Abbott's mass-arrest response.