Posted on 04/28/2002 1:24:25 PM PDT by Ditto
Debate continues over 'The Real Lincoln'
Richard Ferrier counters critic of Abe in Metcalf interview
Editor's Note: WorldNetDaily talk-radio host Geoff Metcalf recently interviewed Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo, author of "The Real Lincoln." In his book, as in the interview published April 14, DiLorenzo claims the 16th president was far more concerned with economic centralization than the abolishment of slavery. The interview elicited strong responses from readers, about half of whom disagreed with the author's assertions. Among them was Dr. Richard Ferrier, president of the Declaration Foundation. According to Ferrier and scholars at the foundation, the evidence DiLorenzo uses to back his claims actually proves the author wrong. Ferrier, who calls DiLorenzo's scholarship "sloppy," explains the quandary in his interview with Metcalf.
Metcalf's daily streaming radio show can be heard on TalkNetDaily weekdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. Eastern time.
By Geoff Metcalf
© 2002 WorldNetDaily.com
Q: What is the bone you have to pick with Tom DiLorenzo?
A: Falsehood, basically. Falsehood in details, sloppiness of scholarship and a fundamentally wrong-headed view of the role of Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence, and American history and our political philosophy.
Q: One of the key items DiLorenzo focused on was his suggestion that the debate between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton was won for Hamilton by Lincoln. Was he wrong?
A: Yes, I think he's wrong. I think Jefferson and Hamilton fundamentally agreed, and Jefferson is the one DiLorenzo will pick as being on his side – that the American Union began not with the Constitution but with the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson said so in a letter to the board of governors.
Q: Tom said as much when he was here.
A: What that means is that we are a people with a limited but sovereign federal government under the rule of law whose spirit is given in the Declaration of Independence. I think on that point Hamilton and Jefferson agree, and they both disagree with Calhoun and Jefferson Davis and the people who started the rebellion of 1860-61. He's just wrong on that, but he's wrong on more gross and obvious matters.
Q: What I am specifically concerned with is what you claim are his factual errors.
A: Suppose I said to you, "Jesus said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones where I will store all my grains and all my goods, and I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years. Take your ease and eat, drink and be merry.'" Is that true?
Q: Did Jesus say that?
A: He did. It's in a parable. He has somebody else say it. Jesus tells the story about the rich man, and those are the words of the rich man. So in a way, it's true that Jesus said that; he said it in quotation marks. He didn't say it himself.
Q: OK.
A: So listen to this from Tom DiLorenzo's book: "Lincoln even mocked the Jeffersonian dictum enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal. He admitted that it had become a genuine coin in the political currency of our generation but added, 'I am sorry to say that I have never seen two men of whom it is true. But I must admit that I never saw the Siamese twins and therefore will not dogmatically say that no man ever saw proof of this sage aphorism.'" That is supposedly from Lincoln. DiLorenzo goes on to add, "So with the possible exception of Siamese twins the idea of equality, according to Lincoln, was a sheer absurdity." This is in stark contrast to the seductive words of the Gettysburg Address 11 years later, in which he purported to rededicate the nation to the notion that all men are created equal.
Q: There is a footnote in DiLorenzo's book regarding that quotation, citing the first Lincoln-Douglas debate.
A: Yes, and when I was researching the book, I dutifully followed up the footnote and read the passage. Rather, I didn't find the passage because it isn't there. It is nowhere in the first debate. It is nowhere in any of the debates. Where it is is in an 1852 eulogy of Henry Clay, and Lincoln is quoting a Virginia clergyman with whom he disagrees. In other words, it's a lie. Lincoln never said those words in his own voice. It is not only a lie, but it is either an incompetent or malicious inference that Lincoln contradicts himself in the Gettysburg Address when he declares his solemn faith in the American creed that "all men are created equal."
Q: DiLorenzo quotes Lincoln from the Lincoln-Douglas debates, saying, "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between white and black races, and I have never said anything to the contrary." Did Lincoln ever say that?
A: He did say that. But DiLorenzo has the citation wrong there, too. It is from a speech Lincoln gave in Peoria in 1854. Lincoln, who was a lawyer and was careful with his words, did not say "I do not believe in that equality. I do not think it is a good thing." He said, "I have no purpose to introduce it." Those are the words of a careful lawyerly politician who knows perfectly well how much good you can accomplish in your time and how much (if you espouse it) will ruin your career and keep you from accomplishing the good you can accomplish. So yes, it's perfectly true that Lincoln said, "I have no purpose," meaning, "I don't at the moment intend to bring about such equality." And if he had said anything else in Illinois in the 1850s, he couldn't have been elected to dogcatcher.
Q: DiLorenzo includes the Lincoln letter to Horace Greeley in 1862. Is that accurate?
A: Yes, but he cuts it off at the end.
Q: Hold on, here's the quote: "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union; it is not to either save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it." What's the rest of it?
A: He continues, "I say nothing about my well-known desire that all men everywhere should be free." In other words, he's speaking as a public man with respect to his constitutional duty, which is to preserve the Union. Now it should be said that Lincoln thought the Union wasn't just a legal entity or a practical entity but an entity like a human being – a body and a soul. And the soul of that entity was the truths that are expressed in the Declaration, including the truth that all men are created equal.
I was a vice chair of the Proposition 209 [California's anti-discrimination law] campaign and a friend of Glynn Custred. This principle of human equality and treating people according to skin color or race is more than dear to me. I have labored in the vineyards for it. Lincoln thought the American Union was not just a matter of laws and conventions and agreements, but it was a kind of spiritual compact. He drew that from the Declaration that, itself, goes back to our Protestant colonial forebearers who believed from Scripture and reason that all men are created equal. So when Lincoln wanted to save the Union – and told Greeley that in a letter – Lincoln is thinking, "I will save the Union, whose heart and soul are the truths that are spoken of in the Declaration." In fact, if it was unwise in the short term to issue an Emancipation Proclamation, he would hold it off. When it was the right time to do it, he would do it.
Q: I asked Dr. DiLorenzo if, in his opinion, Lincoln was a dictator. He said that even some of the most pro-Lincoln historians had called him a dictator. Do you consider Lincoln a dictator?
A: No, I don't. That is a vexed question. By the way, it's a good question for both sides of the Civil War. One of the unhappy things about DiLorenzo's scholarship is that he pays no attention to broad historical context and doesn't look for example at the actions of Jeff Davis and the Confederate government. He finds fault with Lincoln for the suspension of habeas corpus, for various measures taken to suppress sedition in the states under control of the Union, and pays no attention …
Q: I didn't realize so many American citizens were thrown in the slammer just for disagreeing with him.
A: They weren't thrown in the slammer for disagreeing with him. They were thrown in the slammer for encouraging sedition and desertion. There is a long and complex scholarship on this, and you won't get much of it or a balance of it from the book. There was suppression of newspaper editors in Richmond, declaration of martial law in numerous areas of the Confederacy. The Confederacy instituted conscription in advance of the Union. Tom is a libertarian, and he thinks economic issues dominate everything. He thinks personal liberty is the absolute trump card in every argument. He's entitled to think that, but he applies that to Lincoln and the Union without a glance at the corresponding actions in the Confederacy.
Both parts of the American republic in that unhappy war did similar things, and they both did them with respect to sustaining the integrity and security of the Confederacy or the Union. Lincoln is consistently modifying the actions of his subordinates in the direction of liberty and leniency. He has hotheads he has to keep under his control – notably Ambrose Burnside and Ben Butler, who are responsible for unwise actions. And down the line, Lincoln reverses those actions in the direction of liberty. He did that because he conceived of the war and of his sustaining of the Union as a defense of fundamental human rights as expressed in the Declaration.
Q: I was intrigued by Tom's book, because I don't have a dog in this fight. My litmus test is the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
A: I'd add the Declaration.
Q: Fine, we'll make it the troika. Several of the things Lincoln did were specifically designed to abrogate, eviscerate and destroy the very document to which he swore an oath. To say, "Well, gosh, the other guys were doing it too," is not an adequate defense.
A: That is fair enough. In a way, you almost want to look at what Davis and company said. Davis and company argued like Hamilton, and so did Lincoln. That is to say both men, Lincoln and Davis, saw their fundamental duty to support the integrity and security of the republic to which they saw themselves belonging. Of course, Lincoln never saw the Confederacy as a republic; he thought it was an insurrection. They looked at the sections of both the Confederate and U.S. Constitutions, in which the executive is given fairly broad powers with respect to seeing that the laws are upheld and that the public peace is maintained. They both made appeals of that sort. You can hammer out the details ad nasuem.
Q: And you academic guys do.
A: The one that is most plain and reasonable to think about, I think, is the suspension of habeas corpus. That is authorized in the United States Constitution. DiLorenzo and his friends niggle on a small point: that it's Article 1, Section 9, and not Article 2 under the executive power. But the whole first article is about the power of the United States government. Section 10 of Article 1 prohibits the states from doing a number of things. It is not restricted to the powers of Congress. The complaint, if I'm being obscure …
Q: You are.
A: What I'm saying is this: The complaint is Lincoln suspended habeas corpus for the sake of the security of the national capitol. When the bulk of the active powers in Maryland were about to prevent him from being inaugurated, prevent the United States Congress from meeting, organizing military forces to oppose the national government and the like, Lincoln cited Article 1, Section 9. Namely, that habeas corpus could be suspended in the case of insurrection or rebellion in defense of the Constitution and laws that he was sworn to uphold.
The confederates suspended habeas corpus, too, and for the same reason. Namely, that they were concerned with security within the Confederacy. I think in their own lights, both men were right. If the Confederacy was a government and had real independence, it couldn't put up with insurrection in the Confederacy. And there was insurrection in the Confederacy.
Q: What about the repression of all those newspaper editors? The numbers vary; I've heard from 13,000 to a gazillion.
A: Well, not 13,000 newspaper editors …
Q: No, but were the incarcerated people all preaching desertion and sedition, or were they merely critical of Lincoln and as a result got thrown in stony lonesome?
A: There were blockade runners. There was an extensive Confederate spy network. There were plans to disrupt public meetings in Ohio and Indiana. To look at that fairly, you have to look at the scholarship on it. There was an organized seditious campaign, especially in Ohio and Indiana. It was run in part by exiles from Canada in Canada, across the Great Lakes, with actual plans for violent acts and the encouragement of desertion from the United States armed forces. Among those people were newspaper editors. How would you have felt about that during the Vietnam War? What if there had been in Vancouver an organized pro-Viet Cong movement with financial arrangements to the North Vietnamese paying and organizing newspaper writers, agitators on the ground, and planning to disrupt American political meetings?
Q: I wouldn't tell or involve my government, but I'd take about four A-Teams and covertly visit and counsel the offenders with extreme prejudice.
A: Yes, but we didn't want to invade Canada. I feel kind of the same way. But that was the actual situation. When his generals went over the line on that and suppressed people who shouldn't have been suppressed, Lincoln was consistently on the side of clemency. It is an old and ugly grudge that is held against Lincoln and the Union for various reasons. I think partly regional sentimentality, partly racism sometimes and various other reasons make people state a one-sided case against a man who sustained the founding principles of this country.
Q: You are accusing DiLorenzo of sloppy and disingenuous scholarship. Can you give me an example?
A: In support of his thesis, he says, "In virtually every one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln made it a point to champion this corrupt economic agenda …"
Q: Which was the excessive tariffs.
A: Tariffs and internal improvements and a number of other things of that sort.
Q: I'm still not clear on the subtleties of "internal improvements."
A: It's like chartering canal companies and banks and things. He gives a footnote to that, and it's to the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Go look in those debates; there is not a word about this economic agenda. Not a word! Let me read from the Oxford history of this period. It's called "Battle Cry of Freedom," written by Dr. James McPherson, and it is a very respectable book. It's sort of the standard work on the matter. He talks about the Lincoln-Douglas debates:
"Desiring to confront Douglas directly, Lincoln proposed a series of debates." The famous debates that school kids used to read back in the days when we actually taught them something about American history. "The stakes were higher than a senatorial election. Higher even than the looming presidential contest of 1860 … for the theme of the debates was nothing less than the future of slavery and the Union. Tariffs, banks, internal improvements, corruption and other staples of American politics received not a word in these debates."
Q: Nothing about the excessive tariffs?
A: Nothing. I teach this at my college. I must have read and re-read seven debates 20 times. Trust me, Geoff, there is not a word about tariffs in those debates. Nothing.
Q: There is no argument that the tariffs imposed by the North on the South were draconian. You wouldn't refute that, would you?
A: The tariff of 1857, which was the existing tariff at the time, had bipartisan support. The South Carolina delegation voted for it. It was the lowest tariff in 20 years. That's not to say there wasn't debate about tariffs.
Q: The tariffs went from about 15 percent to 40 percent. I'd call that a big hike.
A: Yes, but that's two-and-a-half years later, in 1861. Democrat president James Buchanan signed that tariff, and it had bipartisan support. He called for its passage; he didn't just support it. In the '58 Senate contest and their seven famous debates, Douglas and Lincoln did not cross swords once over tariffs or the bank or internal improvements. I'm sorry to say this, Geoff, but what DiLorenzo says is a lie. These debates are available online. The books are widely published. Your readers should just go out and look. Also, the Declaration Foundation has a number of articles and a forum discussing this very matter of DiLorenzo's book and the legacy of Lincoln.
Q: DiLorenzo includes references to Frances Key Howard and Rep. Vallandigham. What can you tell us about them?
A: I don't know about the first one, but Clement Vallandigham was a Democrat from Ohio. When I mentioned Ambrose Burnside, Vallandigham was the congressman who gave speeches calling for the end of the war and for resistance to conscription …
Q: And against protectionist tariffs and the income tax.
A: That's right, but there was an income tax when he gave the speech that got him in trouble.
Q: My question is about congressional immunity. Unfortunately, Congress critters can get away with saying anything they want, as long as they say it in the well of Congress. How did Vallandigham end up getting his front door kicked in by federal soldiers?
A: He gave his speeches out in his home area in Ohio. The local general, Ambrose Burnside, thought it was treason and put him under arrest right away. When the facts came back to Lincoln, he thought it was unwise and possibly illegal, and he undid Burnside's action. What they offered him was a free pass through Confederate lines. And it's Vallandigham who wound up in Canada organizing seditious anti-Union, and sometimes violent, groups in the period of '63-'64, to undermine the national war effort. But Lincoln let him out. Lincoln turned the key. Burnside is the guy who did that, and Lincoln didn't think it was the right thing to do.
Q: What about the Morrill tariff bill, which bumped the tariff from 15 percent to 47 percent?
A: That bill would never have passed if the Southern states had not seceded. It passed in the Senate – before Lincoln was president, by the way – because 14 Southern senators were out of the Senate. They could have blocked it, but they walked out in advance.
When the neo-Rebels say the tariff was the cause of the war, they conveniently overlook the fact that South Carolina withdrew on December 20th of 1860 – not because of any tariff that had been passed or signed, but because Abraham Lincoln, who declared that slavery was a moral wrong, had been elected president of the United States. The Morrill tariff that you are referring to was not passed until three months after South Carolina and six other states went out.
Q: So if they blame secession on the tariff, they are being more than a little disingenuous.
A: They are doing a little bit of time travel.
The Declaration Foundation's initial response to Thomas DiLorenzo's interview with Geoff Metcalf, written by David Quackenbush, was published by WorldNetDaily on April 23.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo's book, "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War," is available at Amazon.com.
Visit Geoff Metcalf's archive for previous "Sunday Q&A" interviews.
Article 2, Section 3.
he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed
It's hard to imagine someone would post on this issue and be so ignorant of the record they wouldn't know that President Lincoln said in his first inaugural:
"I therefore consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken; and to the extent of my ability I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States. Doing this I deem to be only a simple duty on my part; and I shall perform it so far as practicable, unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means, or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary. I trust this will not be regarded as a menace, but only as the declared purpose of the Union that it WILL Constitutionally defend and maintain itself."
And that is what happened.
Walt
and which law(s) is it that states the preservation of the union?
We get to the Roe v. Wade argument here. Since the Constitution does not explicitly forbid the killing of pre-born children, and since the Constitution does grant a right to privacy, ergo, a woman exercising her "right to privacy" my order the killing of her unborn child, without due process. You simply want to look at the words in the constitution, without any examination of what those words meant to the framers, what those framers actually said those words meant outside the document, and then construe your meanings based on your desires. You let the constitution be a "living document" that can be interpreted any way you see fit.
The Constitution is not like the state motor vehicle code as much as you would pretend it is. You are the one sounding like an ACLU huckster.
"he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed"
It seems to me that the President has no conceivable authority to cease enforcing the laws of the United States, including its organic law, the Constitution.
Interestingly enough, many of the responses are very defensive and hostile. Simple questions, just trying to understand!
The thing about Marx is he backed whichever side was more destructive of restraints on increased production. Probably he would have backed us against the Kaiser and Hitler. Most certainly he would back us against bin Laden. What Lenin would have done in 1940, 2002, or 1861 is a more interesting, though unanswerable, question.
Lincoln and Davis, Union and Confederacy faced each other head to head. Had Lincoln not taken measures to preserve the Union, and Davis taken measures to destroy it and secure his own power in the Confederacy, the Federals might have lost the war. Lincoln would have kept his purity, but would have been condemned for cowardice or indecisiveness for not counteracting the repression of the other side.
What Davis was doing is relevant to what Lincoln did -- and vice versa. It's the same way with two sides in any war. What the other side is doing doesn't serve as a justification for whatever our side does, but it does provide a context for understanding our actions.
Certainly what Davis's actions were more relevant to our understanding of Lincoln's than Lincoln's are to our understanding of FDR's or Clinton's. One can't say that the comparison across centuries is solid and dependable while comparison of what the other side in a war is doing is off-limits.
Remember, the Constitution itself says that the people are ordaining and establishing the Constitution for the sake of forming a more perfect Union.
Preserving the Constitution, by taking care that it and the laws passed under it are faithfully executed, IS the President's assigned way of preserving the Union. He is a creature of the Constitution, and of the people through the Constitution, who are acting for the sake of a more perfect Union. The presidency is an instrument of the people, which they create and deploy through the Constitution for the sake of makeing their political Union more perfect.
Are you looking at the relationship between Constitution and Union in some other way? What am I missing?
According to James M. McPherson (Battle Cry of Freedom), John Merryman was a lieutenant in a secessionist cavalry unit that had burned down bridges and torn down telegraph wires in April 1861. His arrest was not ordered by Lincoln; it was made by army officers who were rounding up Confederate guerillas/spies in Maryland.
Taney's decision in the case was issued not on behalf of the U.S. Supreme Court, but rather just in his role as the senior judge of the federal circuit court in Baltimore. In his opinion, Taney suggests that Article I of the U.S. Constitution [which contains the habeas corpus suspension provision] "is devoted to the legislative department of the United States, and has not the slightest reference to the executive department." Taney is clearly erroneous about that. Section 7 of Article I, for example, states as follows:
"Every bill which shall have passed the House of Representives and the Senate, shall, before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States; if he approves it he shall sign it..."
Moreover, there are numerous others references in Article I to the powers of individual states, and when a provision therein is intended to be limited to Congress, specific reference is made therein to "Congress shall have power" or language to that effect. In fact, Section 9 therein (which contains the provision for suspending habeas corpus) contains one specific reference to what Congress can do (in the first paragraph), but the rest of that section contains no references limiting its applicability to Congress, which strongly suggests that those restrictions apply to all branches of Congress (and arguably to individual states as well).
According to McPherson, "several prominent constitutional lawyers rushed into print to uphold the legality of Lincoln's position [on the suspension of the writ of habeus corpus]". Taney made a weak attempt to have his order to free Merryman enforced by U.S. marshals, but ultimately he complained that he had "exercised all the power which the constitution and laws confer upon [him], but that power has been resisted by a force too strong for [him] to overcome", so he merely called for the President "in fulfillment of his constitutional obligation to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed,' to determine what measures he will take to cause the civil process of the United States to be respected and enforced."
This last statement makes it clear that Taney either lacked the courage of his convictions or (more likely) was just making his latest attempt to please his Confederate friends. Don't forget that this was the same Taney who issued the infamous Dred Scott decision. As McPherson points out, Taney's "main theme of his twenty-eight year tenure on the Court was the defense of slavery." Taney also had a well known grudge against the Lincoln administration even before inauguration, and according to McPherson, Taney had stated that he would refuse to administer the oath if William H. Seward were to be elected (because Seward had accused him of colluding with President Buchanan and the Southern Democrats in issuing the Dred Scott decision).
To summarize, the habeas corpus provision is rather ambiguous and a strong argument could be made that the President is entitled to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during a rebellion, particularly when Congress is not in session or does not object. In any event, in the case of Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, Congress specifically approved of and ratified his decision.
Keep in mind that when the rebellion broke out in 1861 Congress was not in session, and organizing a special session was not easily done at that time given the state of communications and transportation. The fastest route from California and Oregon then was by ship and overland through Central America. Congressmen also had families, jobs, and responsibilities at home which made it quite difficult for them to drop everything and head for Washington, and the Confederate guerillas in Maryland were doing all they could to cut off Washington from the rest of the Union. Lincoln and the Union military leaders were responding to rumours of an imminent attempt by Maryland secessionists to act in concert with Confederates in Virginia to seize, plunder, pillage, and burn Washington to the ground, so using his suspension of habeas corpus and arrest of suspected rebels as some kind of proof that Lincoln was a "dictator" is utterly ridiculous.
DiLorenzo and his Confederate-glorifying cohorts are masters at lifting sensational sounding tidbits out of historical context and using them to try to morph Lincoln into Joseph Stalin's evil twin, and apparently there are enough delusional neo-Confederates out there to make such a blatant smear campaign profitable. Don't expect any rational minds to fall for it, though.
I would agree with this line of thinking if the undercurrent of thought of Lincoln detractors/Confederates was not that the world would have been a better place(more freedom, a real republic etc) if the two had gone their seperate ways. That seems to be the vibe I get off most postings I read as a lurker(I leave the arguing to those much more qualified). To hold up one as a shining example against the darkness of the other comes off a bit hollow when both are the same color. We need to get the real history out there, warts and all, for both sides.
They weren't just rumors. Less than a week after firing on Sumter, the fire-eating Goverenor was sending his troops to Washington.
South Carolina Governor F. W. Pickens to Gen. James Simons of the 4th Brigade, S.C. Militia.
State of South Carolina Head Quarters.20th April 1861
Dear Genl:
The Navy yard at Norfolk is all in flames -- Baltimore unanimous on our side, and all communications with Washington cut off -- & only 5,000 troops in Washington -- it can be taken.Troops are meeting from Augusta to Norfolk & will be there before we start.
Send Gregg immediately with as many as he can get -- wait not a moment, or we are ruined. I will send companies as fast as possible. Let Gregg start immediately with as many possible -- no delay -- for God sake make every thing move. Let Kershaws start with as many companies as he can get immediately. I have seen Beauregard, & he is sending the detailed orders.
We will be disgraced if Georgia gets there before we do. Raise the flag, & go -- My whole heart is with you. Washington is cut off -- and if we could march on it we could take it -- as Baltimore is a unit for us and Maryland rising. They are alarmed in Va. Genl. Taliaferro & Letcher both telegraph me this morning to push forward.
Truly,
F.W. Pickens
Your expansion on the point I made in the interview regarding the location of the Habeas Corpus provision is among the most lucid I have ever seen. Much better than my own words...
Regards,
Richard F.
Distorting history. You've gotta be kidding. Besides that stupid Bimbo Virginia Postrel and her dope smokin buddies at Reason, you really can't find any libertarians who like Lincoln. James Bovard?
No one is more responsible for destroying the decentralized vision that the founders created than the American Lenin, Abe Lincoln!
No, we're not kidding. Please read the interview at the top, or the other exposure of Dr. DiLorenzo.
"Distortion" is exactly the right word. Or maybe not. Maybe it's a shade too kind.
I insist that you respond to it, and to nothing else. What is at issue here is honesty and integrity.
*****
To summarize:
1] The author of the Civil War volume of "The Oxford History of the United States" is struck precisely by the total absence of evidence that DiLorenzo says is "virtually" everywhere in the Lincoln Douglas debates.
2]The editor of the "Collected Works" of Lincoln uses the phrase "his words lacked effectiveness" to describe a portion of a single speech about slavery, but only when that speech ventures beyond its central, crucial topics regarding slavery. In 1998, Dr. DiLorenzo clipped this sentence to make it mean precisely the opposite. Four years later, he reports instead that the editor judges Lincoln's words on slavery for almost a decade to have "lacked effectiveness" and seemed "not at all sincere."
3] A Pulitzer Prize winning historian writes a careful and balanced account of Lincoln's impatient youthful frustration at Democratic resistance to the constitutionality of a national bank. Dr. DiLorenzo tells us that the historian spoke of Lincoln's seething resentment at the Constitution itself.
4] Lincoln quotes with withering disapproval the words of a Virginia clergyman who repudiates and mocks the Declaration doctrine of human equality. Dr. DiLorenzo presents snippets of the clergyman's words as Lincoln's own – a gross falsehood – in order to "prove" that Lincoln's love of the Declaration was insincere.
Suppressed evidence, misquotation, misconstruction of context, incompetent citations, inaccurate implication – it's all here. I have chosen these four examples from a much longer and ever-growing list. But these examples are utterly characteristic of the entire book. Dr. DiLorenzo wonders why the scholarly world has not responded with argument to his revelation of evidence that Lincoln was a tyrant. It may be because his "evidence" is such a cooked up mess.
******
I repeat, I want responses to these items, and these only.
If you don't give them, I will haunt you with them.
The immediate issue is truth.
Either stand by DiLorenzo on these things, or repudiate him, or leave the discussion.
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