Following the election of 1860, the so-called fire-eaters of the planter class had a problem. Even though Lincoln was not talking about emancipation just yet, the planter class was worried about the value of their investment in the ownership of 4 million slaves whose total value exceeded that of all the manufacturing and the railroads in the North. They sought to create a new republic dedicated to the proposition that all men are not created equal.

Secession was an act of rebellion against the United States before the government had done anything to limit or eliminate slavery. The problem they faced was a political one. Articles of Secession required the votes of the people, including the yeoman farmers and poor whites who owned few if any slaves. These poor white farmers numbered in the millions in the South, whereas the planters numbered in the tens of thousands.

To convince these voters that such an extreme political act was necessary, they had to reach back to the arguments that created the country in the first place. The Constitution conferred the right to own slaves, and Lincoln and his “Black Republicans” were seeking to deny that constitutional right, just as King George III had imposed arbitrary rule during the Revolution.

Grievances were necessary to make the argument for secession, but also race hatred, and fear of sexual violence against the women of the South. This they exploited with tales of the horrors inflicted on slave owners and their wives during the rebellion in Haiti earlier in the century that saw the establishment of the first republic ruled by former slaves.

But even these arguments did not prove to be decisive. What did carry the day was the charge that Lincoln had only won through fraudulent voting by African Americans, citing the dual fears of voter fraud and black suffrage as a threat to white male supremacy.

What parallels can we see to the ideology promoted by MAGA and its adherents in the current election? All the elements are there. Grievances based on the false premise of denied constitutional rights for a republic ruled by white men. Voting fraud perpetrated by “the other” — ineligible African Americans or non-citizens. The threat of sexual violence and the need to protect “our” women, and a deep sense that shadowy figures are handing America to people who do not look like them.

These sentiments have been with us and will continue to be with us since our nation’s founding. They gather strength in an era when belief in institutions and government ebbs and the appeal of a powerful figure who can restore those lost rights is growing.

MAGA thrives on division based on legitimate grievances. Principally, an economy that rewards work unequally, and that has sought to maximize profits by stripping away the jobs and institutions that formerly supported working class towns like Greenfield. MAGA has weaponized the real resentments of working people to serve a cause that serves only the leader, himself.

Those plantation owners in 1860 would look on with approval at the tactics of the MAGA crowd today. But remember the actual cost: 300,000 of those southern yeomen who enlisted in the army of the Confederate States of America were dead by 1856. Their homes and businesses were in ruins; their wives and children faced poverty and starvation. The South did not recover economically for 100 years.

Better that we look to Lincoln, who urged his citizens to listen to “the better angels of our nature.” If we listen carefully, we can still hear them today.

David Parrella lives in Buckland.