1. Saying contradictory things before different audiences.
2. Opposing racial equality.
3. Opposing giving blacks the right to vote, serve on juries or intermarry while allegedly supporting their natural rights.
4. Being a racist.
5. Supporting the legal rights of slaveholders.
6. Supporting Clay?s American System or mercantilism as his primary political agenda: national bank, high tariff, and internal improvements.
7. Supporting a political economy that encourages corruption and inefficiency.
8. Supporting a political economy that became the blueprint for modern American.
9. Being a wealthy railroad lawyer.
10. Never defending a runaway slave.
11. Defending a slaveholder against his runaway slave.
12. Favoring returning ex-slaves to Africa or sending them to Central America and Haiti.?
13. Proposing to strengthen the Fugitive Slave law.
14. Opposing the extension of slavery in the territories so that “free white people” can settle there and because allowing them to become slave states would dilute Republican influence in Congress because of the three-fifths rule.
15. Opposing black citizenship in Illinois or their right to immigrate to that state.
16. Failing to use his legendary political skills to achieve peaceful emancipation as was accomplished elsewhere—Lincoln's war was the only “war of emancipation” in the 19th century.
17. Nullifying emancipation of slaves in Missouri and Georgia early in the war.
18. Stating that his primary motive was saving the union and not ending slavery.
19. Supporting a conscription law.
20. Sending troops into New York City to quell draft riots related to his emancipation proclamation, resulting in 300 to 1,000 deaths.
21. Starting a war that took the lives of 620,000 soldiers and 50,000 civilians and caused incalculable economic loss.
22. Being an enemy of free market capitalism.
23. Being an economic illiterate and espousing the labor theory of value.
24. Supporting a disastrous public works project in Illinois and continuing to support the same policies oblivious of the consequences.
25. Conjuring up a specious and deceptive argument against the historically-recognized right of state secession.
26. Lying about re-supplying the fed?s tax collection office known as Fort Sumter.
27. Refusing to see peace commissioners from the Confederacy offering to pay for all federal property in the South.
28. Refusing to see Napoleon III of France who offered to mediate the dispute.
29. Provoking Virginia to secede by taking military action against the Deep South.
30. Supporting a tariff and other policies that systematically redistributed wealth from the South to the North, causing great consternation in the South.
31. Invading the South without consulting Congress.
32. Illegally declaring martial law.
33. Illegally blockading ports.
34. Illegally suspending habeas corpus.
35. Illegally imprisoning thousands of Northern citizens.
36. Tolerating their subjection to inhumane conditions in prison.
37. Systematically attacking Northern newspapers and their employees, including by imprisonment.
38. Deporting his chief political enemy in the North, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio.
39. Confiscating private property and firearms.
40. Ignoring the Ninth and Tenth Amendments.
41. Tolerating the arrest of ministers who refused to pray for Lincoln.
42. Arresting several duly elected members of the Maryland Legislature along with the mayor of Baltimore and Maryland Congressman Henry May.
43. Placing Kansas and Kentucky under martial law.
44. Supporting a law that indemnified public officials for unlawful acts.
45. Laying the groundwork for the establishment of conscription and income taxation as permanent institutions.
46. Interfering with and rigging elections in Maryland and elsewhere in the North.
47. Censoring all telegraph communication.
48. Preventing opposition newspapers from being delivered by the post office.
49. Illegally creating the state of West Virginia out of the “indestructible” state of Virginia.
50. Tolerating or supporting mistreatment of citizens in conquered territory.
51. Taxing those citizens without their consent.
52. Executing those who refused to take a loyalty oath.
53.Closing churches and arresting ministers.
54. Burning and plundering Southern cites.
55. Quartering troops in private homes unlawfully.
56. reating an enormous political patronage system.
57. Allowing an unjust mass execution of Sioux Indians in Minnesota.
58. Engineering a constitutional revolution through military force which destroyed state sovereignty and replaced it with rule by the Supreme Court (and the United States Army).
59. Laying the groundwork for the imperialist and militarist campaigns of the future as well as the welfare/warfare state.
60. Creating the dangerous precedent of establishing a strong consolidated state out of a decentralized confederation.
61. Effectively killing secession as a threat, thus encouraging the rise of our modern federal monolith.
62. Waging war on civilians by bombing, destruction of homes, and confiscation of food and farm equipment.
63. Tolerating an atmosphere which led to large numbers of rapes against Southern women, including slaves.
64. Using civilians as hostages.
65. Promoting a general because of his willingness to use his troops as cannon fodder.
66. DiLorenzo blames Lincoln for the predictable aftermath of the war: the plundering of the South by Lincoln?s allies.
67. Supporting government subsidies of the railroads leading to corruption and inefficiency.
68. Supporting a nationalized paper currency which is inherently inflationary.
69. Creating the federal tax bureaucracy and various taxes that are still with us.
70. Establishing precedents for centralized powers and suppression of liberties that continue to be cited today.
71. Ending slavery by means that created turbulence that continues to this day.
THE INDICTMENT by DiLorenzo
Against King Lincoln
Assuming these are in order of importance, you realize that the first five apply to Davis as well? Perhaps more so? Also number 10 is incorrect - in the 1841 case Baily v Cromwell, Lincoln successfully argued in the defense of a black woman named Nance who had been seized as a runaway. Number 12 was a position also held by Robert Lee - he paid passage for several of his former slaves to Liberia. Number 13 was certainly held by Davis. Number 17 is bogus - what Union troops were in Georgia early in the war for anyone to free? Number 19 is Davis and Lee as well - the confederacy was the first to resort to conscription. Number 20 is bogus - the casualties were nowhere near that. Numbers 21 through 26 are absolute nonsense. Number 27 is bogus - there were no peace commissioners sent. Numbers 28 through 37 are nonsense as well. Number 38 is bogus - 'chief political rival'? Vallandigham? Oh hell, 80% of the remainder are lies and the rest ain't true. Typical Tommy rot.
So let's see, of those which are true they could also be used to indict every one of your southern leaders. The rest are figments of Tommy's imagination. Some indictment.