A Hackle-Raiser For Sure!
By Kerry Walters
February 18, 2017
If there
are any sacred cows in America, the one at the head of the herd has got
to be Abraham Lincoln. Our culture gleefully vilifies almost everyone.
Psycho-biographies, in which the darkest interior rooms of the subject
are exposed to light, are the rage these days. But somehow Lincoln for
the most part has managed to escape all this. He’s still the great
American hero, venerated by layperson and scholar alike, sometimes to
the point of embarrassing hagiography. (I once knew a history professor,
for example, who insisted that students refer to Lincoln, both in class
discussions and in term papers, as “MR. Lincoln.” His class could just
as well have been offered by the theology department.)
Thomas DiLorenzo refuses to genuflect before Lincoln’s altar. In *The Real Lincoln*,
a book that’s guaranteed to infuriate a wide audience, ranging from
Civil War buffs to Lincoln scholars to African-Americans to political
liberals to history traditionalists, DiLorenzo claims that Lincoln’s
real historical legacy is the strong centralized state that
characterizes the American political system today. From first to last,
claims DiLorenzo, Lincoln’s political vision was the creation of a
Whiggish empire of protectionist tariffs, government subsidized
railroads, and nationalization of the money supply. In the first year
and a half of his administration, he pushed through much of this agenda.
The average tariff rate tripled, railroads began raking in government
money (a “war necessity”), and the National Currency Acts monopolized
the money supply.
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So far none of this is terribly alarming. Even admirers of
Lincoln will admit much of what DiLorenzo says about Lincoln’s economic
dream and Whig leanings. But where DiLorenzo begins to stir up a storm
is when he claims (1) that Lincoln basically allowed an unnecessary and
horribly bloody war to occur in order to further his political vision of
a strong state; (2) Lincoln was a “constitutional dictator”; and (3)
Lincoln was never terribly concerned with slavery as a moral injustice.
In reference to the first
point, DiLorenzo points out that the right to secession was simply
taken for granted by most Americans prior to Lincoln’s administration
because they saw the country as a voluntary association of states.
Lincoln didn’t “save” the Union so much as he destroyed it as a
voluntary association. In reference to the second point, DiLorenzo
provides example after example of Lincoln’s disregard–supposedly in the
interests of the state–for the Constitution: launching a military
invasion without Congressional consent; suspension of habeas corpus;
censorship of newspapers; meddling with elections; confiscating private
property; and so on. Finally, in reference to the last point–which is
probably the book’s most inflammatory one–DiLorenzo argues that Lincoln
rarely mentioned the issue of slavery in political speeches until it
became politically expedient to begin doing so. His opposition to
slavery was always based on what he feared was its economic dangers, not
on moral principle.
As his contemporaries
accurately noted, Lincoln the “Great Emancipator” was never an
abolitionist. Even after the Emancipation Proclamation, he was willing
to tolerate slave-holding in non-secessionist states. His ultimate
solution–one that infuriated abolitionists such as Horace Greeley–was to
colonize American blacks “back” to Africa or the Caribbean.
Much of DiLorenzo’s
claims about Lincoln’s activities will be familiar. What’s new about the
book is the overall unfavorable portrait of Lincoln that emerges as
DiLorenzo discusses them. It may be the case that DiLorenzo has swung
too far in the opposite direction from conventional Lincoln hagiography.
But it may also be the case that his book will encourage more moderate
and accurate portrayals of Lincoln in the future.
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