One might think that, having published a 2002 book called The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Thomas DiLorenzo would’ve gotten everything off his chest on the question of whether or not the Great Emancipator was even halfway decent. Well, it turns out the professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland was only getting warmed up. Lincoln was an absolute tyrant.
At last month’s FreedomFest, held at Bally’s on the Las Vegas Strip, DiLorenzo discussed highlights from his most recent book, Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe (Random House) on July 5 to about 100 people. For longtime Libertarians, his research is no shocker. Of his blistering critique of Abe, arguably America’s most iconic president, DiLorenzo practically profiled the 16th President a child rapist.
Indeed, DiLorenzo opened by articulating Lincoln’s promotion and support of the Corwin Amendment, a Congressional effort to extend slavery to the degree that even “personal liberty laws” in Northern states would have been rendered null and void. That Lincoln asked New York Sen. William Seward to propose the Corwin Amendment shortly after being elected speaks volumes about his two-facedness. The Amendment was defeated, and Seward would go on to become Lincoln’s Secretary of State. And now Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzalez almost seem like OK folks by comparison. Almost.
Then, according to DiLorenzo, there’s the issue of double taxation. In his inaugural address, Lincoln spoke in support of the Corwin Amendment. He promised to keep slavery intact, to not invade the South, and to not collect a double tariff. Once the South seceded, of course, he needed to collect federal taxes, and so Lincoln ended up breaking all his promises, despite his ongoing support of the racist institution of slavery. It’s clear that he only emancipated the slaves to enable the North to maintain control of the Southern economy, and not for any moral reasons. It was for the usual purpose: power.
“The average American doesn’t know a lot about this subject,” said DiLorenzo, stopping his overview at one point in order to list all the things that Lincoln reportedly said — but, in fact, never did, including the famous line: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you can not fool all the people all the time.”
“He never said that,” DiLorenzo claimed.
In another of the book’s chapters, “The Truth About States’ Rights,” he articulates how the Founding Fathers considered states to be different countries, or a confederation of sovereign states. In their view, the federal government served as a compact of free and independent states. The biggest lie is the notion that states were never sovereign according to the Constitution. It was Alexander Hamilton, chief brains behind the Federalist Party, who put forth the idea that a president enjoyed veto power against all state legislation, and that individuals, rather than states, had signed the Declaration of Independence. Sure, the Declaration begins with “we the people,” but the fuller sentence is “we the people of the states …” In fact, the King of England didn’t sign a treaty with the United States; he signed it with the states. The purpose of such a lie, though, is to realize Hamilton’s dream of a powerful centralized government.
Delving further into Lincoln’s career as a lawyer, DiLorenzo pointed out how Lincoln served as a railroad lobbyist and represented all the big railroad companies, including Illinois Central on a property-tax case, for which he presented the company with a $5,000 bill. Lincoln also received kickbacks from land deals in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
More significantly, DiLorenzo, in a chapter called “The Politics of the Lincoln Cult,” outlines the political uses of the legend, and how both political parties, Democrats and Republicans, rely on Lincoln as an excuse for bad behavior. DiLorenzo pointed to the work of another scholar, Frank Meyer, who made the case that Lincoln made possible the further trashing of the Constitution, and even established such trashing as a precedent. Almost makes Dick Cheney look like a truthful soul. Almost.
In any case, Lincoln Unmasked sounds and looks like a book that anybody who cares about real American history — not the effluvia served up in public schools — should have on their bookshelf. Indeed, the deification of the president began with Lincoln; ever since, the president has exerted godlike powers. Time for those powers to be curtailed.
