Lincoln Unmasked

by Thomas DiLorenzo

  A direct confrontation, and, quite possibly, civil war, was avoided only when a new tariff calling for gradually lower rates was adopted [in 1833]. After the [Tariff of Abominations] crisis passed, the tariff continued to decline slowly until the Civil War began for real in 1861. But it remained far higher than required to fund the government’s usual revenue needs, and the tariff, then nearly synonymous with federal taxes, was a prime cause of the Civil War (emphasis added).17

  Unlike the Lincoln cultists, Gordon admits that the Republican Party of 1860, led by Lincoln, had an interest in the acquisition of wealth and power, and was not purely a charitable and humanitarian enterprise. And of course, a protectionist tariff was the key ingredient in the acquisition of that power.

  The “liberal” writer Michael Lind, formerly an editor of Harper’s magazine, The New Yorker, and the New Republic, is another author who has dared to reveal many of the truths about Lincoln and his war that are usually ignored or excused away by Lincoln cultists. Lind is not particularly known as a Lincoln scholar, but in 2005 he came out with a book entitled What Lincoln Believed: The Values and Convictions of America’s Greatest President. Apparently, Lind’s book is acceptable to the gatekeepers because his discussions of unflattering truths about Lincoln are accompanied by enough excuses, rationales, and justifications. And, in the end, Lind concludes that Lincoln was “America’s greatest president.”

  Lind acknowledges that the Lincoln legend has been appropriated from time to time by both the political Left and Right. “The liberal Left, no less than the radical Left, sought to enlist the prestige” of Lincoln to promote its political causes, he writes.18 Unlike almost all other writers on the subject, Lind emphasizes that Lincoln was devoted to the “Hamiltonian tradition” of economic statism and interventionism. He notes that Lincoln was a longtime Whig, “the party of the educated and economic elites,” and that he was, in fact, a “wealthy railroad lawyer” whose “clients included giant corporations, millionaires, real estate speculators, and corporate executives,” not a poor backwoods railsplitter. Henry Clay’s system of corporate statism, or mercantilism, which involved protectionism, central banking, and corporate welfare, was finally put into place in America by Clay’s “disciple Abraham Lincoln” who “adopted Clay’s entire … program as his own.”19

  Nor does he deny that economics, and not humanitarian issues, dominated Lincoln’s political career. Or, that the main opposition to Hamiltonian mercantilism was predominantly based in the South.20 “If not for the opposition of Southerners in Congress and the White House, many of the government programs that Congress enacted during the Lincoln years, such as national banking, high tariffs, and massive railroad subsidies, would have been enacted decades earlier by the Federalists or the Whigs.”21

  Lind also faults American historians who have “refused to confront the fact of Lincoln’s racism candidly.”22 And he does not ignore the truth that Lincoln was not a Christian despite his frequent use of Scripture in his political speeches, acknowledging that “Despite his lack of Christian faith, Lincoln’s oratory is suffused with phrases and images from the King James Bible.”23

  What Lincoln Believed also dismisses the absurd notion that Lincoln was philosophically a Jefffersonian. Lind quotes Lincoln’s longtime law partner, William Herndon, as saying “Mr. Lincoln hated Thomas Jefferson as a man and as a politician.”24 But Lincoln was not beyond quoting Jefferson if it served his political ends, just as he was not beyond quoting the Bible if it, too, would serve his political ends. The reason he made such a big deal out of the “all men are created equal” line in the Declaration of Independence, for example, was simply to try to win votes from Jeffersonian Democrats in the border states and the West who still revered Jefferson.

  Lind also acknowledges, rather than covers up, Lincoln’s dreams of “colonization” and of turning America into an all-white society. The “meteoric rise of Lincoln in national politics” was greatly enhanced by the fact that he was a “leader of the Free-Soil movement whose goal was a white West.… For Lincoln, as for most white Free-Soilers, the purpose of preventing the extension of slavery to the territories was to keep the West white.”25 Free soilers like Lincoln supported “laws designed to keep free blacks out of Northern and Western states.”26

  It is possible, after all, to publish truth rather than myth about Lincoln, as long as one is not a professional historian or a bona fide “Lincoln scholar.”

  Yet another example of a book by outsiders who have challenged the Lincoln cult is Lincoln’s Wrath: Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a President’s Mission to Destroy the Press, by journalist Jeffrey Manber and historian Neil Dahlstrom. Lincoln’s Wrath focuses on the heavy-handed crackdown on freedom of speech in the Northern states during the Lincoln administration. As stated in the inside cover: “Lincoln’s Wrath tells the incredible story of the overlooked chapter of the Civil War, when the government pressured and physically shut down any Northern newspaper that voiced opposition to the war. The effect was a complete dismantling of the press.”27 “Overlooked” indeed.

  Newspaper editors in the North who “clung to what many saw as the suddenly out-of-fashion principles of the Constitution,” and therefore opposed the Lincoln administration, were shut down by the hundreds by the Lincoln administration, with the full knowledge of the president himself.28 Any newspaper deemed by Lincoln to be “guilty of being in opposition to the war” was shut down and, in many cases, its printing presses destroyed.29 Not only that, but editors and owners of opposition newspapers were routinely imprisoned in military prisons without any due process. This behavior would have caused Jefferson, the great champion of free speech, to call for another revolution or war of secession.

  CHALLENGING THE LINCOLN CULT

  Weisman, Holt, Webb, Gordon, Lind, and Manber and Dahlstrom have written truths—as opposed to myths and fantasies—about Lincoln and his war. And it is telling that none of them is a bona fide member of the Lincoln cult. As such, they are not in position to be pressured, threatened, or bribed into repeating the party line of the Lincoln cult. This is also true of your author, a professional economist, and of Charles Adams, a tax attorney and historian. It was also true of Edgar Lee Masters (a native of Illinois), Clarence Darrow’s law partner who wrote the most critical appraisal of Lincoln to appear in the first century after his death—Lincoln the Man.

  For generations, Lincoln scholars have been essentially “court historians” who have conspired to deify not only Lincoln, but the presidency in general and, consequently, the American state. All certified members of the Lincoln cult are champions of big government. Liberal Lincoln cultists frequently invoke the holy image of the sixteenth president to promote their favorite causes, from civil rights legislation to the watering down of constitutional restrictions on governmental power. Conservative Lincoln cultists point to Lincoln’s brutal, dictatorial militarism and his shredding of civil liberties as they promote their favorite cause, foreign policy imperialism. In other words, politics is an important reason why the Lincoln cult so zealously guards the false image of American history that it has created.

  The Lincoln cult is devoted to miseducating Americans about their history.

  The deification of Lincoln has always been part of a not-so-hidden agenda to expand the size and scope of the American state far beyond what the founding fathers—especially the Jeffersonians—envisioned. The war itself was a revolution against the Jeffersonian states’ rights ideal and the voluntary union. That union—the one created by the citizens of the free, independent, and sovereign states when they ratified the Constitution—was destroyed in 1865. In its place was put a coerced union in which the Southern states, especially, became mere subject provinces rather than sovereigns. Before long, this was true of all the states.

  American citizens were to be sovereign over their own federal government as members of political communities organized at the state and local levels. With the death of states’ rights in 1865 came the death o
f citizen sovereignty in America.

  The Lincoln cult desperately seeks to keep these dark thoughts out of the minds of the American public by creating falsehoods and deceptions about American history. Generations of Americans have been taught the New England version of their country’s history, which is filled with lies and fantasies. The idea of federalism, which older generations of scholars recognized as the central proposition of the Constitution, has largely been eliminated from American history books. If not eliminated, it is demonized into “states’ rights” and associated with slavery and racism.

  This, of course, is false. But the Lincoln cult has nevertheless succeeded in miseducating the American public about the most fundamental idea of the Constitution. They are traitors to the American ideal of limited, constitutional, decentralized government, and to the personal liberties that system was designed to protect. The Lincoln myths form the ideological cornerstone of the bloated American state, which will never be restored to its proper role until these myths are challenged and overthrown.

  APPENDIX

  What They Don’t Want You to Read

  Many readers of my earlier book, The Real Lincoln, have written to ask me, “Why wasn’t I taught these things in school?” Good question. “These things,” such as Lincoln’s suspension of constitutional liberties and his waging war on civilians, are well-documented historical facts that have been available in scholarly publications for generations. But for the most part they have been studiously kept out of the school textbooks. If not, they are usually hidden behind a barrage of excuses and rationales. There are a number of books and publications, however, that allow students of American history to see for themselves what documentation there is for the points made in this book.

  PART I

  What You’re Not Supposed to Know

  About Lincoln and His War

  2. The Lincoln Myths–Exposed

  Publications that expose many of the major Lincoln myths include Jeffrey Hummel’s Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, which covers most of the important economic and political aspects of the war, as well as some of the military ones. North Against South: The American Iliad 1848–1877, by Professor Ludwell Johnson, formerly of William and Mary College, is one of the most insightful and informative books written on the subject in the past century.

  An older, classic critique of Lincoln is Lincoln the Man, by Edgar Lee Masters. Masters was a native of Chicago, Illinois, and onetime law partner of the infamous attorney Clarence Darrow. He was also a renowned playwright who devoted many years of his life to studying and writing about Lincoln and his war.

  Another book is Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, by Lerone Bennett, Jr., managing editor of Ebony magazine. The result of more than a decade of research and writing, and studiously ignored by the Lincoln cult, Bennett’s book contains a wealth of facts about Lincoln and his political associates that one would not normally be exposed to in the public schools, universities, and the “mainstream” literature. It is an especially powerful critique, coming from such a distinguished African American author.

  When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, by Charles Adams, is another must-read. Adams is a scholar outside the Lincoln cult who carefully dissects Lincoln’s language and actions and presents many important (and well-documented) facts that are usually kept from the public eye by our self-appointed gatekeepers.

  A fascinating and fact-filled book is The Lincoln No One Knows, by Webb Garrison, who was the author of more than fifty books on Lincoln and the war, and president of McKendree College in Illinois. He describes Lincoln in his concluding chapter as a “self-taught mystic.”

  An essay by Murray Rothbard entitled “America’s Two Just Wars: 1776 and 1861,” in John Denson, ed., The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, is an outstanding analysis that combines history, economics, and philosophy to understand Lincoln and his war. Another important essay in the same volume is Clyde Wilson’s “War, Reconstruction, and the End of the Old Republic.” Professor Donald Livingston’s essay “A Moral Accounting of the Union and the Confederacy” provides a more accurate account of Lincoln’s real attitude on the issue of race than is normally provided by the gatekeepers (Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 2002, pp. 55–105, online at http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/16_2/16_2_4.pdf).

  Finally, the “King Lincoln” archives on the website LewRockwell.com are worth pursuing. These articles contain links to hundreds of other articles and books that can be indispensable to anyone who is interested in educating himself about the real Lincoln.

  3. Fake Lincoln Quotes

  The first book to consult regarding the validity of quotes attributed to Lincoln is They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions, by Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George. A classic analysis of Lincoln’s use of rhetoric is the late Mel Bradford’s book, A Better Guide Than Reason. Bradford was perhaps the preeminent Lincoln critic of his time, and a renowned student of rhetoric who taught at the University of Dallas for many years. His book dissects much of Lincoln’s political rhetoric in a way that obliterates many of the Lincoln myths.

  4. The Myth of the Morally Superior “Yankee”

  Joanne Pope Melish’s excellent book, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780–1860, was my primary guide when writing about true Yankee values. An important book about Northern attitudes toward race in the antebellum period is Leon Litwack’s North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860. This book has been largely swept under the rug by the Lincoln cult, but it is a gold mine of historical information. Eugene Berwanger’s The Frontier Against Slavery also presents a portrayal of race relations in the Northern states that is sharply at odds with the myth of the morally superior Yankee.

  C. Vann Woodward’s The Strange Career of Jim Crow documents how oppressive and discriminatory laws that came to be known as “Jim Crow” laws in the South originated in the Northern states. Slavery in New York, edited by Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris and published by the New-York Historical Society, catalogues the three-hundred-year history of slavery in that state. Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery, by Anne Farrow, Joel Lang, and Jenifer Frank, is also very revealing and informative.

  Finally, a most insightful article is “The Yankee Problem” by Professor Clyde Wilson of the University of South Carolina, online at http://www.LewRockwell.com/wilson/wilson12.html. This was followed by “The Yankee Problem Again” at http://www.LewRockwell.com/wilson/wilson17.html.

  5. Lincoln’s Liberian Connection

  The notes from meetings Lincoln held with the free black men in the White House to discuss colonizing Liberia are in Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings, which can normally be found at most libraries in America, online, and at all the bookstore chains. The most authoritative book on “colonization” is by P. J. Staudenraus and is entitled The African Colonization Movement, 1816–1865. Among the places where Lincoln publicly advocated colonization are in his 1852 eulogy to Henry Clay, his 1854 speech in Peoria, Illinois, an 1857 speech in Springfield, Illinois, and his 1862 message to Congress, all of which are in his published Speeches and Writings. In The Lincoln No One Knows, Webb Garrison concluded that Lincoln pushed for colonization until the very end of his life.

  6. An Abolitionist Who Despised Lincoln

  Abolitionist Lysander Spooner’s letters, and many of his other publications, can be found on the website http://www.lysanderspooner.org/bib_new.htm. An excellent book of Spooner’s essays, including “No Treason,” is The Lysander Spooner Reader, edited by George H. Smith. Also relevant is Spooner’s book, The Unconstitutionality of Slavery.

  7. The Truth About States’ Rights

  Forrest McDonald’s States’ Rights and the Union: Imperium in Imperio, 1776–1876 is one of the best modern surveys of the American states’ rights political tradition. An outstanding and even more contemporary book is
Reclaiming the American Revolution: The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions and Their Legacy by William J. Watkins. Published in 2004, this was the first book to be published on the famous Resolves in over one hundred years, thanks to the censorious actions of the “gatekeepers.”

  James J. Kilpatrick’s The Sovereign States: Notes from a Citizen of Virginia is in a class all by itself in terms of its scholarship and eloquent writing style by the former nationally syndicated columnist. Professor Clyde Wilson’s From Union to Empire: Essays in the Jeffersonian Tradition is in the same category. Both of these books are comprehensive treatments of the Jeffersonian, states’ rights tradition in America.

  Freedom and Federalism, by the great “classical” liberal Felix Morley, is also indispensable to understanding the American tradition of federalism or states’ rights. The same goes for Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C. Calhoun, edited by Ross M. Lence. The Essential Calhoun, edited by Clyde Wilson, is also important, along with Calhoun and Popular Rule by Lee Cheek.

  8. Constitutional Futility

  St. George Tucker’s View of the Constitution of the United States is the best existing source of information on the Jeffersonian view of the Constitution. Tucker’s purpose was to “Americanize” Blackstone’s Commentaries on the law and to explain the Jeffersonian view of the Constitution. A good companion book is Tyranny Unmasked by the Virginian John Taylor, which applies the Jeffersonian ideology to the policy and politics of his time (early nineteenth century), especially the tariff issue. Taylor’s New Views of the Constitution is also a classic.

  Gottfried Dietze’s book, America’s Political Dilemma: From Limited to Unlimited Democracy, describes the consequences of abandoning the Jeffersonian states’ rights view of the Constitution and adopting the nationalist, Lincolnian view instead. Secession, State and Liberty, edited by David Gordon, is a collection of essays about the principles of nullification and secession in the American political tradition.