Another book by Thomas DiLorenzo? Yes indeed, but this one goes far more into depth than his first blockbuster on the subject. Recall that DiLorenzo single-handedly dragged serious Lincoln scholarship into the mainstream to show that he was not the great liberator but a classic despot in every way. This book explores the network of academics, gatekeepers, historicans, and politicians who invented the myth and keep it alive.
You just can’t believe what incredible fibs the hagiographers have told about Lincoln–all documented with extreme precision herein. Walter Berns, leading member of the Lincoln cult, said that though Lincoln micromanaged a war that killed hundreds of thousands of his fellow citizens, Lincoln himself “purged his heart and mind from hatred or even anger towards his fellow-countrymen of the South.”
If you think that’s nuts, wait until you see what DiLorenzo quotes from Harry Jaffa!
Further, the Lincoln apologists have consistently defended his totalitarian methods of wartime governance.
DiLorenzo discusses how the Lincoln cult came into being and came to dominate national politics–and how completely far from the truth they have strayed. They have buried the reality of who he was and what he did in the service of a mythical civic ethos that celebrates devotion to the central state above all else.
Warning: This book is super hot, written with the passion of a researcher who knows his subject better than all his critics, past, present, and future.
They say that Lincoln struck a blow for liberty but this book is what strikes the real blow for liberty and truth. DiLorenzo is a brave man who doesn’t shy away from busting every myth Americans have come to believe about the man on the penny–and he shows that the conventional story isn’t worth as much.
{ 28 comments }
I thought Publisher’s Weekly and the reason are supposed to list the summary of the book. Their hysterical denunciation of this is so childlike, I’m going to buy this book.
Don’t Tread On Me, Dishonest Abe
Don’t Tread On Me, Dishonest Abe
Don’t Tread On Me, Dishonest Abe
What’s up with the iconoclasm among libertarians? Of course Lincoln wasn’t a libertarian. Who was back then? But had he not defeated the South, Southerners would probably still be practicing slavery today. Slavery wasn’t an economic issue with the South; it was part of their identity. They were willing to sacrifice their wealth, their families, everything in order to retain slavery. For all his faults, Lincoln deserves credit for ending slavery in the US.
Mr. DiLorenzo has bravely offered a sound view of the unsound Lincoln.
“Lincoln deserves credit for ending slavery in the US.”
Lincoln’s Financiers have enslaved us All, Roger.
Here’s wondering if the Good Author is planning to right the record in re: TR?
Roger M,
***Who was back then…***
Lysander Spooner for one, and perhaps reading these will put it some CONTEMPORARY perspective.
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/UnconstitutionalityOfSlaveryContents.htm
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/bib_new.htm
click on “No Treason”.
He was completely anti-slavery but was mostly in sympathy with the Confederacy. Perhaps history is more nuanced than the proscribed fluvia dished out to children, which stands as the sum total of what adults typically know.
So while Spooner acknowledges the good end result of the end of slavery, the means were not to be supported. And given the Federal-dominated world we live in today, with more code than any country in history and a $46 Trillion accrual debt, it’s hard to argue with his attitude toward the seeds that were sown with Northeastern-style Statism that prosecuted the War.
And, is it iconoclastic to look at facts? Facts erased from socialistic history taught in skool? Lincoln was characterized as an uncouth ape and had to slip into DC under cover of night. He was disliked quite intensely by most, and was not on the southern ballots at all. The South hated his Northern attitudes, broadly, and the Northeast hated his Western Hillbilliness. He mismanaged the war acutely, and when northern support waned, he trotted out the Proclamation AS COMMANDER AND CHIEF that had sat in his desk for months to reinvigorate interest in the war FROM A SLAVERY POINT OF VIEW. Up until then he said he would preserve the union one way or another, freeing or not freeing the slaves.
And after his assassination, there was sadness to some degree, but Lincoln the Myth that has passed on to this day didn’t start until the late 1880′s, used as fodder by proto-Statists for their endeavors.
Roger M:
It is totally ridiculous to say that slavery would still exist in the south today. Slavery was dying as an institution by the 1860′s. It would likely have been effectively gone by the 1880′s to 1890′s at the latest. The effects of industrialization would have assured that. Also, slavery was NOT a part of the culture. It was an institution practiced by a small number of large plantation owners. In fact, many southerners opposed slavery because it undercut wages. In any event, slaughtering 600,000 people was far to high a price to end something which would have ended by itself in 20 years.
I always find it amusing that a man who instituted a draft that the rich could buy their way out of, can be considered as “against slavery.”
Also, it is always interesting to note, as DiLorenzo repeatedly does, that the United States was unique among approximately 100 contempary nation states in its need to have a war to end the institution of slavery. To me, it’s the most damning of the raft-load of evidence that undercuts the contention that the U.S. Civil War was primarily about ending slavery.
“Slavery was dying as an institution by the 1860′s.”
Then why did the South fight so hard to keep it? If only a handful of Southerners owned slaves and the rest opposed it, why did so many Southern soldiers sacrifice lives and limbs to defend the wealthy few who owned slaves?
Some have argued that the South fought for states rights, not slavery, but they had fought for states rights for decades without resorting to war. They took up weapons only when the states rights issue became slavery.
Your precept is incorrect, which renders the conclusion invalid.
The south did not fight hard to keep slavery.
In fact, Lincoln offered the South an amendment to the Constitution which would have forbidden the central government from interfering with slavery for all time. It passed Congress and was in fact signed by Lincoln. The South could have won right there on the issue of slavery once and for all. They didn’t take this false bait, which puts to rest once and for all that this war was fought over slavery. It was fought over Lincolnian mercantilism and centralization of power in Washington. Slavery was a smokescreen, nothing more.
I have stated the following several times before, but I believe repetition would be helpful. If the North was so concerned about the plight of African-Americans under slavery, it was quite inconsistent in its support for the oppressed, since this same Northern government shortly after the conclusion of the “Civil War” committed what can accurately be labeled as genocide against the Plains Indians. As morally reprehensible as slavery is, I am afraid genocide is even more so.
Mark Brabson is correct when he states that the “Civil War” was “fought over Lincolnian mercantilism and centralization of power in Washington.” I would add that the specific causes in 1861 were the extremely high protectionist tariff and the South’s proposal to make their ports free trade areas.
Mark Brabson,
Good point on the “Ghost” 13th Amendment that would have ensured that slavery was never banned in the future:
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.”
It is formally referred to as the Corwin Amendment. It passed both the house and Senate, recieving exactly 2/3rds of the vote in the Senate and 2/3rds (plus one) in the House. This is even more remarkable given that the seven Deep South states that already seceeded refused to vote on the matter.
If slavery was the primary issue, then surely the states would have came back to the Union. But they didn’t, and that’s because there were other issues involved, such as the massive wealth tranfers from Southerners to Northern Industrial Mercantilists. 70% of tax revenue was collected in Southern Ports before the war started.
Sadly, it was the Constitution itself and its Fugitive slave clause that prolonged slavery. If the constitution were never adopted, slavery would have died out a few decades after independence. Hear me out:
Without a fugitive slave clause, neighboring states have no obligation to capture escaped slaves and return them. Furthermore, a slave would become a free man as soon as he or she reached a free state; there is a reason that the undergounrd railroad went to Canada. The enforcement costs without a fugitive slave clause would have been far higher and slavery would have collapsed much sooner.
It would have made it even more uneconomical to employ slavery. The massive waves of immigration that came to the US in the 1800s would have also severly impeded slavery. Even with the costs of enforcing slavery socialized via the fugitive slave clause, plantation owners often chose Irish immigrants to do the most miserable work because it was cheaper than risking the life of a slave.
Following up on Nick’s comments, the Confederate Constitution actually prohibited the importation of slaves from outside the CSA and US slaveholding Territories.
So yes, the institution’s days were numbered with technological advances and cultural evolution. How different things would be now, if the wrongs of slavery had been left to work themselves out as a matter of course.
Then why did the South fight so hard to keep it? If only a handful of Southerners owned slaves and the rest opposed it, why did so many Southern soldiers sacrifice lives and limbs to defend the wealthy few who owned slaves?
The fact that otherwise seemingly intelligent people believe this propaganda shows how successful it has been.
The South was paying around 3/4 of the federal revenue, which at that time was derived from tariffs on imported goods (there was no income tax, yet).
The South bought a lot of imported goods, since it had far less industry than the North. The South could buy many kinds of goods more cheaply from Europe than from New York.
Northern businesses wanted a tariff on imports that was so high that it made European goods more expensive than American-made goods. Of course, such a tax meant a huge price increase for the Southern consumer.
In the 1830s, the tariff was raised to an extremely high level, and was called the Tariff of Abominations. The South almost seceeded over it, but it was reduced, and secession was averted for a time.
Lincoln’s promise, his main campaign platform, was that he would raise the tariff again. He was naturally supported by Northern businesses and opposed by Southerners.
He also wanted a central bank, and he wanted to use federal money to subsidize railroads and other transportation projects. The South would, in effect, be taxed disproportionately to pay for Northern railroad projects.
Lincoln also ran on a platform of NON-INTERFERENCE WITH SOUTHERN SLAVERY. This was a part of his policy that the new territories (e.g., Kansas and Nebraska) would eventually be free states, so as not to compete against “free white labor.”
In other words, Lincoln’s opposition to the EXPANSION of slavery into the new territories was not for the slave’s benefit, but for the benefit of non-slaveholders, so they would not have to compete against slave-holders. As for blacks themselves, Lincoln favored deporting them to Africa.
By the way, Lincoln freed no slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was a war-time measure only, and applied only in the South. He did not have the power to end slavery, nor (if you believe his campaign promises) did he even seek to.
The war was fought over taxes. The North wanted to tax the South to pay for Northern construction projects. The South didn’t want to go along that.
This is why the war started at Ft. Sumter — it was a federal tariff-collection site. The South seceded, expelled the USA from Confederate territory, but they refused to leave Ft. Sumpter. So, the South fired on the foreigners who were illegally occupying a fort in CSA territory, killing no one (although one man died in a non-combat accident).
The USA troops and representatives surrendered and left unharmed. Then Lincoln invaded a few weeks later.
What you have been taught is a lie.
The Corwin Ammendment doesn’t prove anything. It was offered much too late, after several states had seceeded and begun the formation of a new government. Also, as Wikipedia writes “There was never a liklihood it would win the approval of the necessary three-fourths of the states.”
Gentlemen
Imagine you are the President. Some States decide to leave the Union. You have a choice:
1/. Initiate organised violence in order to force those States back into the Union.
2/. Seek an alternative to war, develop revised policy to deal with the new circumstances.
Should you choose Option 1 you are necessarily choosing to impose death upon many people. You are responsible for much injury, mayhem, destruction of wealth, unleashing of barbarism, frustration of progress & civilisation, terrible tragedy for many, many other people.
Should you choose Option 2 you are going to be in for a difficult and challenging time. There will be controversy and political debate. Some people may oppose you. Some mercantile interests will be frustrated. You will need to expend considerable efforts developing new policy to adjust the Union to the new circumstances. The intellectual demands required from you will be high.
So, do you start killing Americans or not?
THAT was Lincoln’s choice.
Sione
Sione hits the nail on the head. The South simply wanted to leave the Union peacefully, and Lincoln said no. Such a response from Lincoln defies common sense decency and morality. The South did not threaten or invade the North, they were invaded and the war for them was strictly defensive. Instead, the South was bloodied, completely ruined, and race relations made worse. The history of the whole thing isn’t mysterious, thanks to the contributions of DiLorenzo and others.
Lincoln was a product of his time and his culture, and as appalled as I am at our own time and culture, I can hardly be appalled at Lincoln, who incidentally also fought a campaign as a company commander against a starving tribe of Black Hawk Indians seeking food in their anscestral hunting grounds.
Problem is, Don, is that such statements take accountability out of anybody, since each second that passes is history – meaning that EVERYBODY is ipso facto the product of his/her time and thus accountable to not one! Even saying that Lincoln was a pragmatist does not excuse his choices.
Excellent thread. I had not heard of the tax revenue aspects that fueled the desire of Southern states to exit the union. But it was clear that Lincoln had no particular concerns about the rights of slaves or of the welfare of Irish and other immigrants, and Sherman’s wanton destruction in his march through the South was unnecessary and sheer vindictiveness – that fueled resentment that still bubbles today, and seems reflected in the shift in the Republican powerbase and the present Red state/Blue state divide.
If Lincoln had allowed the Southern states to secede, what would we have ended up with? A much small federal government, with much less rent-seeking. Trends towards economic integration, even with a separate CSA, would no doubt have continued.
To Mark Babson’s point:
Social engineering often results in government forcing something that, if good would have emerged, albeit more slowly, in a free society and if bad would be pushed out by human action. Government gets it wrong so often because it is trying to force on humans many things that are unnatural and bad for the long-term well-being of mankind. That is, government is an unnatural force when it attempts to counter natural human action and re-action.
My second point would be that George W. Bush is revered for his misdeeds around the world by up to 50% of the population because they support his social engineering at the world level. Lincoln was a social engineer, and so are his fellow Republicans, including the current U.S. president George W. Bush.
George:”The war was fought over taxes.”
The information on the tax situation is interesting. But your conclusion is hard to swallow. You’re arguing that Lincoln, and the north, were willing to go to war to keep their unfair taxes on the South. That might be plausible, since everyone thought the war would be short. But once they realized how long and bloody the war would be, especially after Gettysburg, the best Lincoln could come up with is the Emancipation Proclamation? If Lincoln knew the war was about taxes, why didn’t he seek a compromise on the tax issue after Gettysburg? Maybe Lincoln was as stupid as you guys say he was, but he never seems to have a clue that the war was about taxes.
PS, The South never seems to have figured out that they were fighting for tax relief, either. Otherwise, they might have accepted that the taxes would be less damaging than the total destruction of their states. I don’t recall Jefferson Davis offering to compromise on taxes at any time during the darkest days of the war when his nation had been destroyed and he was certain of defeat.
You’re arguing that Lincoln, and the north, were willing to go to war to keep their unfair taxes on the South.
I am not really arguing it. I am merely taking these people at their word. Lincoln used the phrase “Save the Union.” He said this repeatedly — that he had no intention of interfering in Southern slavery, but that his only goal was to “save the Union.”
What does that mean to them? What exactly was to be “saved”? What is a “union” other than the ability to make law that applies to a geographic territory?
At that time, there was no New Deal-style welfare state in place. The function of the federal government at that time was primarily to collect taxes on foreign trade. To be in the Union meant that Washington decided what tariff rates would be. Since tariffs were the government’s source of revenue, a person’s position on tariffs was at least as hotly debated (and a source of one’s political identity), as income taxes are today.
Lincoln was also openly protectionist — he wanted to use such taxes not only for revenue (to fund transportation projects — he was a railroad lobbyist by trade), but also to subsidize Northern manufacturers. This was no secret. It has been merely forgotten.
Being in the “Union” also meant that the federal government could decide whether the newly admitted states would be slave or free. This was not, primarily, a moral issue as we see it today. It was (of course) economic.
If the new states were to be free, then slave-holding estates could not move there. If they were to be slave states, then slavery would inhibit the ability of “free white labor” to move there, as it they would have to compete with slave-holders.
One of the propositions was that the territories could decide for themselves what their slavery law would be. Lincoln was against this, and wanted it to be decided by the federal government. (Lincoln was the original “decider,” I guess.) This was another element of “Union” that Lincoln wanted to save — controlling the question of whether slavery would be legal in these new territories.
PS, The South never seems to have figured out that they were fighting for tax relief, either. Otherwise, they might have accepted that the taxes would be less damaging than the total destruction of their states. I don’t recall Jefferson Davis offering to compromise on taxes at any time during the darkest days of the war when his nation had been destroyed and he was certain of defeat.
The South was fighting for independence, as they saw it, from the control of a government they thought no longer represented their interests.
The South did, in fact, offer before the war to make a settlement with the US government over property and other reimbursements as part of an amicable separation. Lincoln refused to meet with the delegation.
As to the initial economic calculation of whether war was a better choice than submission, we can only now say in hindsight that they were wrong. The point is moot, though.
As to the economic calculation of whether, once it began, continuing the war was better than surrender, I would have to say that the South’s worst fears were, in fact, realized. The decision to keep fighting is certainly understandable under the circumstances.
“If only a handful of Southerners owned slaves and the rest opposed it, why did so many Southern soldiers sacrifice lives and limbs to defend the wealthy few who owned slaves?” Simple answer . . . they didn’t. I have twelve known relatives that served in various Virginia regiments of the Confederate Army, ten of whom were self-sustaining rural farmers (+ one gambler and one pastor). There is absolutely NO logic in believeing that they were so foolhearty as to risk everything that they held dear, including families and property, to defend an institution which benefitted them NOTHING.
However, invasion of one’s homeland is quite the spark to light the fire of self-sacrifice in any man of honor.
I’ve created a group called “Mises Circle” at LibraryThing.com. Come to http://www.librarything.com/groups/misescircle and join up to discuss any interesting books!
>>”Slavery was dying as an institution by the 1860′s.”
>Then why did the South fight so hard to keep it?
Same reason the USofA is fighting to keep our empire?
Taxes – because of the trade winds it was easier to ship cotton from New Orleans to England than to New England. The North tried to force the South to trade to them and take the loss.
The first question is not why did the South fight. It’s why did Lincoln want war with the South. It was Lincoln’s choice. He was a fanatic for a stronger centralized government like Hamiliton and Clay before him. His vision of the future depended on it.
Sucession is the greatest threat to centralized government. Therefore supporters of secession had to be killed or otherwise neutrilized through the costs of war. Devastation of the South is what he wanted believing the effect would be that Southerners would hate secession as much as he did, though for a different reason.
Sherman, Grant and Sheridon among others came to understand this. The destruction they delivered is exactly what Lincoln wanted. They were following Lincoln’s plan.
All the crimes against the constitutional that Lincoln committed he justified by his belief that sucession was the immediate and ultimate threat to the future of a United States with a controlling federal government.
Lincoln wasn’t alone. His party, Wall Streeters and Northern industrial powers had the same vision. Lincoln had written about population growth for the US into the 20th century extroplating current data to gain insight into when we’d reach certain levels. This had to do with projecting national power and world wide influence. This is what he saw as our destiny and therefore the part he wanted to play in that. This was his ambition.
Comments on this entry are closed.