9. Lincoln’s Big Lie
When learning about state sovereignty there’s no substitute for original sources. Thus, an important reference is American Historical Documents. The Avalon Project at Yale Law School, online at http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon. Then there’s the old classic by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay, The Federalist Papers. The rhetoric of “the whole people” is expertly dealt with in James J. Kilpatrick’s The Sovereign States, cited in the last chapter; in Gottfried Dietze’s The American Political Tradition; and in Reclaiming the American Revolution by William J. Watkins, Jr.
10. A “Great Crime”: The Arrest Warrant for
the Chief Justice of the United States
Sources of documentation for Lincoln’s arrest warrant for Chief Justice Taney include Frederick S. Calhoun, The Lawmen: United States Marshals and Their Deputies, 1789–1989; George W. Brown, Baltimore and the Nineteenth of April, 1861: A Study of War; and Benjamin Robbins Curtis, A Memoir of Benjamin Robbins Curtis. Legal cases that also document the arrest of other federal judges include Murphy v. Porter (1861) and United States ex re John Murphy v. Andrew Porter, Provost Marshal District of Columbia (2 Hay. & Haz. 395; 1861). I also recommend Greg Loren Durand, America’s Caesar: The Decline and Fall of Republican Government in the United States of America. The appendices to this book contain many original documentary sources of Lincolnian tyranny.
The two best books on the topic of Lincoln’s unconstitutional and dictatorial behavior are Dean Sprague’s Freedom Under Lincoln and Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln by James Randall, who gatekeeper James McPherson once called “the preeminent Lincoln scholar of the last generation.” A more recent edition to this literature is Lincoln’s Wrath: Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a President’s Mission to Destroy the Press by Jeffrey Manber and Neil Dahlstrom. Historian Frank Klement also included a lengthy discussion of Lincoln’s abolition of civil liberties in the Northern states in his book, Lincoln’s Critics. Constitutional Dictatorship, by Clinton Rossiter, includes an entire chapter on “The Lincoln Dictatorship.”
PART II
Economic Issues You’re Supposed to Ignore
11. The Origins of the Republican Party
A good reference to the domestic policies of the Lincoln administration is Leonard P. Curry’s book, Blueprint for Modern America: Nonmilitary Legislation of the First Civil War Congress. A somewhat updated version of this book is Heather Cox Richardson’s The Greatest Nation on the Earth: Republican Economic Policies During the Civil War. Both authors are proponents of big government and liberal activism, and so are not as critical of this “blizzard of legislation” as they should be. For a more realistic and analytic view of this legislation see Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., and Mark Thornton, Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War; and The Real Lincoln.
12. The Great Railroad Lobbyist
The most informative book on the topic of Lincoln’s involvement with railroad corporations is John W. Starr’s Lincoln and the Railroads. Dee Brown’s classic, Hear That Lonesome Whistle Blow: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads, also contains a great deal of information about how the Republican Party cabal profited enormously from engineering the subsidization of the transcontinental railroads. Lincoln the Man, by Edgar Lee Masters, includes a discussion of Lincoln’s connections to the railroad barons of the mid-nineteenth century.
For the story of how and why subsidies were not necessary to build the railroads, see James J. Hill’s autobiography, Highways of Progress, and Burton Folsom’s The Myth of the Robber Barons. Also see my book How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present.
13. The Great Protectionist
A good source of information on the 1828 “Tariff of Abominations” is Chauncey Boucher, The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina. Another source is W. W. Freehling, Prelude to the Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina, 1816–1836.
The story of how Lincoln used his twenty-eight-year reputation as an ardent protectionist to procure the 1860 Republican Party nomination is told by Professor Reinhard H. Luthin in “Abraham Lincoln and the Tariff,” The American Historical Review, July 1944, pp. 609–629.
Economists Robert A. McGuire and T. Norman Van Cot argue that the tariff controversy was a much more important cause of the war than most historians will admit, in “The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship,” Economic Inquiry, July 2002, pp. 428–438 (this is one of the top academic journals in the field of economics).
In When in the Course of Human Events, tax historian Charles Adams devotes several chapters to the role of the tariff in precipitating the war; and the classic history of nineteenth-century tariff policy is Frank Taussig’s The Tariff History of the United States. Robert B. Ekelund, Jr., and Mark Thornton explain the economics of tariffs in the context of the war as well as anyone has in their book Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation.
An old classic that includes a very readable analysis of tariffs in general is Frederick Bastiat’s Selected Essays in Political Economy. The chapter on international trade in Milton and Rose Friedman’s Free to Choose is a good primer on the subject. Another lucid essay is Murray Rothbard, “Protectionism and the Destruction of Prosperity,” online at http://www.mises.org/rothbard/protectinism.asp. Finally, there’s my own article, “Why Free Trade Works,” in the February 1989 issue of Reader’s Digest.
14. The Great Inflationist
Robert Remini’s Andrew Jackson and the Bank War is a fascinating account of the pitched political battle between Jackson and Nicolas Biddle, president of the Bank of the United States. General references on the history of banking policy in America are Murray Rothbard’s A History of Money and Banking in the United States; Richard Timberlake’s Monetary Policy of the United States; and Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money? In his book Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men, Jeffrey Hummel has an outstanding and comprehensive discussion of the economics of the “Independent Treasury System” that Lincoln so despised, as well as the banking legislation of the Lincoln administration itself.
Lincoln’s publicly stated views on banking policy are found throughout his speeches, especially the one cited in this chapter.
PART III
The Politics of the Lincoln Cult
15. Making Cannon Fodder
To fully appreciate the arguments for sending our young men and women off to fight wars they don’t believe in, one must read Making Patriots by Walter Berns. In addition, I strongly recommend Claes Ryn, America the Virtuous: The Crisis of Democracy and the Quest for Empire. This book is a scholarly analysis of the mind-set of neoconservatives like Berns who distort history so that it serves their political purpose of transforming America into a militaristic and imperialistic world hegemon (all cloaked in the Lincolnian rhetoric of “virtue” and “civil religion”). Two other books on the rather strange subcult known as the “Straussians” (followers of the late philosopher Leo Strauss), of which Berns is a member, are Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire by Anne Norton, and Leo Strauss and the American Right by Shadia Drury. The chapter on the Straussians in Daniel Flynn’s book, Intellectual Morons, is also well worth reading.
16. Lincolnite Totalitarians
Most Americans who have watched a television documentary on the Civil War featuring prominent Lincoln scholar Eric Foner would probably have a different opinion of him if they read his opposition to the breakup of the Soviet Union in an essay entitled “Lincoln’s Lesson” in the February 11, 1991, issue of The Nation magazine.
Frank Meyer’s warnings about Lincolnian totalitarianism in National Review are online at http://www.lincolnmyth.com/without_rhetoric.html. Rothbard’s “outing” of William F. Buckley, Jr., as an admitted statist is also online at http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard6.html.
A good source of information on right-wing totalitarians, like Buckley, who frequently invoke the Lincoln le
gend to promote their cause is the “Neoconservativism” archives on www.LewRockwell.com. Claes Ryn’s America the Virtuous is also worth pursuing in this regard.
The biggest reason why Lincoln is always ranked as “our greatest president” by the politically correct, left-wing American history profession is that his political legacy is so supportive of their socialistic, big government agenda. Thus, almost any mainstream book on Lincoln will use his image in some way to advocate even bigger government. One good example of this phenomenon is former New York governor Mario Cuomo’s book (with gatekeeper Harold Holzer), Why Lincoln Matters: Now More Than Ever. Cuomo and Holzer argue that were Lincoln alive today he would embrace their social democrat/welfare statist political agenda.
17. Pledging Allegiance to the Omnipotent Lincolnian State
A good source of information on the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance is John Baer’s book, The Pledge of Allegiance: A Centennial History, 1892–1992. Since the Pledge was intended by its author to help achieve the kind of “socialist utopia” described in the novel Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy, that book is worth pursuing as well. An article that puts the socialist pledge into perspective is Bob Wallace’s “The Socialist Pledge of Allegiance,” at http://www.LewRockwell.com/wallace/wallace139.html.
18. The Lincoln Cult on Imprisoning War Opponents
The December 23, 2003, Insight magazine article by Michael Waller entitled “When Does Politics Become Treason?” must be read in order to be believed. It literally suggests punishing dissenting members of Congress’s loyal opposition for treason because they voiced doubts about the (second) war in Iraq.
Congressman Vallandigham of Ohio got in trouble with Lincoln because of his speeches advocating a peaceful resolution of the conflict between the North and the South. A good source for those speeches is The Record of Hon. C. L. Vallandigham: Abolition, the Union, and the Civil War (Wiggins, MS: Crown Rights Publishers, 1998). Dean Sprague’s Freedom Under Lincoln contains some fairly detailed descriptions of the “gulags” where Lincoln’s political prisoners were held. Frank Klement’s book, Lincoln’s Critics: The Copperheads of the North, is an excellent source of information on Northern opposition to the war in general, and the Vallandigham story in particular.
Fate of Liberty by Mark Neely, Jr., is an elaborate excuse for such atrocities, but it does include a great deal of information, such as the revelation that Northern political prisoners were routinely subjected to water torture, among other indecencies.
Michelle Malkin’s In Defense of Internment was very harshly criticized by defenders of civil liberties (see especially Ilana Mercer, “Internment Chic,” http://wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40171). It is worth noting that one of her primary “defenses” was that Lincoln established precedents for imprisoning—without due process—suspected “enemies of the state.”
19. Contra the Lincoln Cult
Steven Weisman, James Webb, and Michael Holt, all outsiders of the Lincoln cult, write expertly and objectively on Lincoln and his time. Weisman’s The Great Tax Wars is a general history of the U.S. income tax, but contains some exceptionally insightful commentary about the tax policies of the Lincoln regime. Like Weisman’s book, James Webb’s Born Fighting is not about Lincoln or the war per se, but is a history of the Scots-Irish in America. And like Weisman, he makes many wise and well-informed commentaries about these former subjects.
Michael Holt is America’s preeminent historian of antebellum politics. He knows a great deal about Lincoln and the war, but that is not considered to be his specialty. I don’t consider him, in other words, to be a card-carrying member of the Lincoln cult. His analysis is distinguished from the usual storytelling not only because of Professor Holt’s deep knowledge of his subject, but the fact that he is also obviously a keen student of politics, political science, and economics. He is better qualified, in other words, to comment on political economy than are other historians who are less schooled on those subjects but insist on commenting on them regardless. Thus, his book, The Fate of Their Country, is a must-read.
Michael Lind’s book, What Lincoln Believed, generally agrees with all of my arguments about Lincoln the “mercantilist” and political tool of big business, but Lind believes that that was a good thing! He mistakenly believes that interventionist policies that benefit particular, politically connected businesses and industries are somehow good for everyone. They are not; they benefit the favored businesses and industries at the expense of everyone else. In any event, there are some useful facts in the book. If nothing else, those readers with some education in economics will get a few good laughs.
Finally, Lincoln’s Wrath by Jeffrey Manber and Neil Dahlstrom is one of the more recent books to reveal some important not-so-pleasant facts about America’s sixteenth president, namely, that he had a “mission to destroy the press” in the Northern states—and he succeeded.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wish to thank my friend and colleague Lew Rockwell, president of the Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, for providing me with a forum for my ideas and writing through both his website, LewRockwell.com, and the scholarly activities of the Institute. All of my fellow academics who work with the Institute have been invaluable sources of ideas and constructive criticism. Another academic “family” that I have benefited from being associated with are all those who work with the Abbeville Institute, founded by Professor Donald Livingston of Emory University.
Both of these institutes, and the people associated with them, are unique in today’s academic world in that their objective is the relentless pursuit of truth without any regard whatsoever for political correctness or “acceptability” by the academic “establishment.” Indeed, such acceptability would cause them to think they had followed the wrong path.
I also wish to thank my employer, Loyola College in Maryland, for providing an atmosphere of academic freedom in which I can continue to pursue my research and writing without the kinds of interferences that are so commonplace in today’s politically correct academic world.
Jed Donahue and Mary Choteborsky of Crown Forum provided me with excellent editorial advice.
Finally, my wife, Stacey, has had great tolerance for my sometimes hermitlike existence with my head in books or in front of a computer for days on end while engaged in my writing. She is always there to support me and my work, for which I am eternally grateful.
NOTES
Chapter 1
1. M. E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason: Federalists and Anti-Federalists (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1994); and Mel Bradford, “The Lincoln Legacy: A Long View,” Modern Age, Fall 1980.
2. Thomas H. Landess, “Mel Bradford, Old Indian Fighters, and the NEH,” http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig4/landess1.html.
3. According to Webster’s College Dictionary, a cult is a “group that devotes itself to or venerates a person, ideal, fad, etc.” or “a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist.”
4. Eric Foner, “Lincoln’s Lesson,” The Nation, February 11, 1991, p. 149.
5. See especially the “King Lincoln” archives on www.LewRockwell.com.
Chapter 2
1. Robert Johannsen, Lincoln, the South, and Slavery (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990), p. 1.
2. Abraham Lincoln, “Letter to Horace Greely, August 22, 1862,” in Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings, ed. Roy Basler (New York: Da Capo Press, 1946), p. 652.
3. Howard Cecil Perkins, Northern Editorials on Secession (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1964), p. 163.
4. Lee Kennett, Marching Through Georgia: The Story of Soldiers and Civilians During Sherman’s Campaign (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 286.
Chapter 3
1. Paul F. Boller, Jr., and John George, They Never Said It: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes, and Misleading Attributions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 77.
2. Ibid., p. 80.
3. Ibid., p. 81.
4
. Ibid., p. 82.
5. Alan Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President (New York: Wm B. Eerdmann, 2003).
6. Comment made by Reverend Steve Wilkins at an American history conference attended by the author.
7. Boller and George, They Never Said It, p. 84.
8. Ibid., p. 85.
9. Ibid., p. 87.
10. Ibid., p. 82.
11. Ibid., p. 88.
Chapter 4
1. Clyde Wilson, “The Yankee Problem in America,” online at http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson12.html, reprinted from the Jan./Feb. 2002 issue of Southern Partisan magazine.
2. Joanne Pope Melish, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and Race in New England, 1780–1860 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998), p. 17.
3. Ibid., p. 32.
4. Ira Berlin and Leslie M. Harris, eds., Slavery in New York (New York: New-York Historical Society, 2005), p. 114.
5. Melish, Disowning Slavery, p. 285.
6. Ibid., p. 69.
7. Ibid., p. 164.
8. Ibid., p. 64.
9. Ibid., p. 165.
10. Ibid., p. 186.
11. Ibid., p. 199.
12. Ibid. p. 209.
13. Ibid., p. 236.
14. C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), p. 21.
15. Ibid., p. 20.
16. Ibid., p. 21.
17. Ibid., p. 23.
18. Leon Litwack, North of Slavery: The Negro in the Free States, 1790–1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), p. vii.
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