The drag and drop question has no middle positive answer , like benefits out weigh negatives or something to that affect . <| sep |> What kind of soil ? <| sep |> There are only two parts of his analysis that I think are inaccurate , otherwise everything else is spoton . I ' m going to deal with these in the reverse order to which they were brought up in , because that let ' s me deal with them chronologically , as they happened . Lincoln and many elements in the Republican party were more concerned about preserving the union than they were with freeing slaves . Lincoln makes this abundantly clear in his letter to Horace Greeley , and elsewhere where he outright condemns the actions of the abolitionists like John Brown and Harriet Tubman . There was never any party of emancipation . There was just some bootsontheground operatives who often had to work against both parties to accomplish their goals . Lincoln later used emancipation as a rallying issue because he knew the common folk cared about it . The second issue is that many , many Dixiecrats did in fact , as is laid out in Philips ' analysis of the Southern Strategy , quit the Democrats and joined the Republicans . From now on , the Republicans are never going to get more than 10 to 20 percent of the Negro vote and they don ' t need any more than that . but Republicans would be shortsighted if they weakened enforcement of the Voting Rights Act . The more Negroes who register as Democrats in the South , the sooner the Negrophobe whites will quit the Democrats and become Republicans . That ' s where the votes are . Without that prodding from the blacks , the whites will backslide into their old comfortable arrangement with the local Democrats . Note how this is in the 1970 s , after the senators switched . This was never about the senators , it was about the individual racist voters . They definitely did switch , and in droves .