Was Lincoln a Tyrant?

Just for starters, the four sentence Lincoln "quotation" that DiLorenzo triumphantly mentions here is the italicized epigram at the beginning of a chapter. He says nothing about it in the body of the chapter.

ping!

Thanks to one of my former students, now in law school, for the following paper he sent me today -- which DiLorenzo's reply apparently provoked his logical mind into composing on the spot.

In the portion of his book dealing with Mark Neely, DiLorenzo does two things: first, he explains and interprets Neely’s book, Fate of Liberty: “In 'Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Rights,' Mark E. Neely Jr. observed that as early as the 1840s Lincoln, one of the most ambitious politicians in American history, was seething with resentment over the fact that the Constitution stood in the way of the Whig economic program and his vaunted American System.” Second, Dilorenzo provides a quote from Neely’s book, in support of his interpretation: “At that time, writes Neely, 'Lincoln appeared to be marching steadily toward a position of gruff and belittling impatience with constitutional arguments against the beleaguered Whig program.’” However, as you pointed out in your reply on WND, this quote does not support Dilorenzo’s interpretation, for it merely says that Lincoln was frustrated, not with the Constitution itself, but with the constitutional arguments of his opponents. Moreover, your reply has shown that Neely himself, in the very same work and on the very same page from which Dilorenzo has extracted this quotation, wrote that Lincoln thought that the Bank (one element of the Whig program) was Constitutional.

In his most recent reply to you on lewrockwell.com, Dilorenzo repeats the quote from Neely: “Lincoln exhibited a ‘gruff and belittling impatience’ over constitutional arguments that had stood in the way of his cherished mercantilist economic agenda.” He then mentions your claim that he misinterpreted Neely: “Quackenbush takes me to task for allegedly implying that Neely wrote that Lincoln opposed the Constitution and not just constitutional arguments.” But he neglects to repeat his explanation and interpretation of Neely’s work, which provided the basis for your charge: “Mark E. Neely Jr. observed that as early as the 1840s Lincoln, one of the most ambitious politicians in American history, was seething with resentment over the fact that the Constitution stood in the way of the Whig economic program and his vaunted American System.” Rather than trying to defend his interpretation of Neely, Dilorenzo simply ignores it.

Dilorenzo then takes sophistry to a new level. He says that he argues “at great length in the book that Lincoln did resent the Constitution.” Well, so what. The fact that Dilorenzo argues that Lincoln did resent the Constitution doesn’t give him license to misquote Neely to that effect. Dilorenzo continues: “In fact, this quotation of Neely comes at the end of the chapter entitled “Was Lincoln a Dictator,” in which I recount the trashing of the Constitution by Lincoln as discussed in such books as James Randall’s Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln, Dean Sprague’s Freedom Under Lincoln, and Neely’s Fate of Liberty.” Again, the views of Randall and Sprague on Lincoln’s view of Constitution are irrelevant. You did not claim that Dilorenzo misrepresented their views. You claimed that he misrepresented Neely’s. What is at issue, then, is what Neely, not Randall and Sprague, thought of Lincoln’s attitude towards the Constitution. And as for Neely’s Fate of Liberty, if some other part of that work indicated that Neely thought that Lincoln was “seething with resentment” of the Constitution itself, then why didn’t Dilorenzo choose to quote that part, instead of the sentence that he did quote, which, as you have shown, doesn’t support his interpretation of Neely in the slightest? Perhaps the reason why Dilorenzo didn’t quote some other text from Fate of Liberty to support his interpretation of Neely is that such a text doesn’t exist. In Fate of Liberty, Neely does not imply that Lincoln was frustrated with the Constitution itself, he merely says that Lincoln was irritated by the tendentious arguments of his political opponents, who, in Lincoln’s view, failed to recognize the constitutionality of his programs. You established that in your reply, quoting Neely’s Fate of Liberty a number of times to this effect.

This seems to be a pattern for Dilorenzo: his arguments are so weak that he feels the need to buttress them by appealing to the authority of famous and respected historians. However, these historians don’t agree with him, so he is forced to misrepresent their positions. Another example of this, as you well know, is his treatment of Roy Basler.

As you demonstrated in your reply, Dilorenzo totally misinterprets Basler’s “lacking in effectiveness” sentence. Dilorenzo defends that misinterpretation in his most recent reply, ridiculously claiming that Basler believed that Lincoln’s words on slavery were ineffective “because Lincoln’s actions did not match his impressive rhetoric.” But your reply proved that “the actual quotation clearly implies that – even in this single speech, Basler's only topic – Lincoln's words on slavery were not ineffective on the crucial questions ‘of the extension of slavery, of preserving the essential central idea of human equality, and of respecting the Negro as a human being.’”

What is even more egregious, however, is Dilorenzo’s attempted defense of his claim that Basler’s text implied that Lincoln was “insincere.” As you mention in your reply, Dilorenzo wrote that Basler "wrote that Lincoln barely ever mentioned the topic prior to 1854 and even then, he did not seem at all sincere. 'His words lacked effectiveness,' writes Basler." Here is a concise summary of Dilorenzo’s defense of his claim in his lewrockwell.com column: Lincoln contradicted himself many times by making racist remarks, etc. Therefore, his public comments about slavery and the natural rights of the Declaration were insincere. Therefore, according to Dilorenzo, it makes sense to interpret Basler’s quote that Lincoln’s words were “lacking in effectiveness” to mean that they were also insincere, since Lincoln was in fact insincere.

First of all, I don’t think that Dilorenzo has in any way established that Lincoln was insincere. Second, even if Lincoln were insincere, that doesn’t mean it’s reasonable to interpret Basler’s quote to mean that. One might just as well say that because Lincoln was tall, Balser’s quote about “lacking in effectiveness” also implied that Lincoln had greater than average height.

To sum up, I think that the following is an abstract version of Dilorenzo’s method of argument:

He claims that a brilliant and renowned historian says that “A is B.”

You point out that the historian in fact said no such thing.

He replies by saying that, even apart from his quotation of the historian, he himself proved that “A is B” elsewhere in his book. But even assuming arguendo that Dilorenzo did prove it somewhere else in his book, that still doesn’t justify his misquoting the historian.

To take an analogy: Let’s say a constitutional scholar wrote a book against Roe. v Wade in which he totally misquoted Justice White, a staunch opponent of Roe, and implied that White thought Roe v Wade was correctly decided and regretted writing his dissent. Let’s also assume that the scholar was later criticized for his misquotation of Justice White. It wouldn’t be sufficient for the author to defend himself by saying that the rest of his book definitively proved that Roe v Wade was rightly decided. Even assuming that his book did prove that, it doesn’t give him license to misquote White.

But not only would the scholar be wrong in thinking that because Roe v Wade was rightly decided, he could misquote White to that effect, he would also be wrong about Roe in the first place: in fact, it’s bad constitutional law.

And as the hypothetical constitutional scholar stands to Justice White, so does DiLorenzo stand to Lincoln.

fyi

As a southerner living in the south for sixty years, I have studied history and came to conclusions about the Civil War. War is hell and usually caused by greed. The demoncrap leadership of the South was responsible for ALL the carnage of the worst war in our history. They are still at it today. The U.S was blessed to have Lincoln as our President at the time.

Given the extent that Jefferson Davis abused and ignored his own constitution, locked up political prisoners, and nationalized key industries like textile, salt, whiskey, and shipping, any rational person would come to the conclusion that he was the tyrant rather than Lincoln.

The two need not be mutually exclusive.

Bump

The law of unintended consequences strikes again? With your midnight self-fellation, Di Lorenzo's book is advertised even more. Keep up the good work.

The good work lies in exposing charlatans like DiLorenzo.

His whole edifice of lies about President Lincoln crashes down based on one datum.

President Lincoln refused to rescind the Emancipation Proclamation when it might have helped him win re-election. He took a strong moral position to do so and no amount of lying will change that.

Walt

[Lincoln] stated in his 1852 eulogy to Henry Clay that as monstrous as slavery was, eliminating it would supposedly produce “a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself;” and in his February 27, 1860 Cooper Union speech advocated deporting black people so that “their places be . . . filled up by free white laborers.”

Check the speeches. The Clay eulogy is garbled to produce a gross misrepresentation, [Basler, pg. 274] and the Cooper Institute speech actually has Lincoln quoting Jefferson, and not saying a thing there about "deporting." [Basler, pg.531]

DiLorenzo has a habit, nay, a vice, of abuse of language.

It's very helpful for him to continue responding; he destroys his credibility and damages his cause every time he opens his mouth.

Cheers,

Richard F.

The latest meeting of the Declaration Foundation will now come to order!! Talk about us posting articles about lincoln!! When it comes to dispelling lincoln mysths, fish and barrels come to mind for some reason

Ping!

Yep. Lincoln was a tyrant.

During the War between the States Lincoln was known to instruct his military commanders to furlough registered Republicans while keeping Democrats (and any others) in the field, where they could not vote. In border states like Maryland, where there was powerful opposition to the war, federal soldiers flooded the cities on election days and were instructed to vote, even though they were not residents of those states.

In the 1862 election, the Republicans lost seats in Congress and barely retained their majority because of the opposite of what you say -- so many Republicans were in the army and not at home to vote.

In the 1864 election the Republican National Committee was so certain that Lincoln would lose, they actually asked him to step down so a new nominee could be selected.

You've been duped.

Walt

The 1864 fraud was the result of the 1862 scare.

Glad to give you the chance to modify your previously false position. Where's your documentation?

Walt