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Was Lincoln a Tyrant?
LewRockwell.com ^ | April 29, 2002 | Thomas DiLorenzo

Posted on 04/29/2002 10:04:22 PM PDT by davidjquackenbush

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Was Lincoln a Tyrant?

by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

In a recent WorldNetDaily article, “Examining ‘Evidence’ of Lincoln’s Tyranny (April 23),” David Quackenbush accuses me of misreading several statements by the prominent historians Roy Basler and Mark Neely in my book, The Real Lincoln:  A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War With regard to Basler, I quote him in Abraham Lincoln:  His Speeches and Writings, as suggesting that on the issue of slavery, post 1854, Lincoln’s  “words lacked effectiveness.”  Quackenbush says he was not referring to Lincoln’s comments on slavery here, but other things.   I read him differently. What Basler said was that, yes, Lincoln used eloquent language with regard to human equality and “respecting the Negro as a human being,” but he offered no concrete proposals other than the odious colonization idea of his political idol, Henry Clay.  As Basler wrote, “The truth is that Lincoln had no solution to the problem of slavery [as of 1857] except the colonization idea which he inherited from Henry Clay.”  In the next sentence he mentions Lincoln’s eloquent natural rights language, then in the next sentence after that, he makes the “lacking in effectiveness” comment.  What I believe Basler is saying here is that because Lincoln’s actions did not match his impressive rhetoric, his words did indeed lack effectiveness. 

As Robert Johannsen, author of Lincoln, the South, and Slavery put it, Lincoln’s position on slavery was identical to Clay’s:  “opposition to slavery in principle, toleration of it in practice, and a vigorous hostility toward the abolition movement” (emphasis added).   Regardless of what Basler said, I take the position that Lincoln’s sincerity can certainly be questioned in this regard.  His words did lack effectiveness on the issue of slavery because he contradicted himself so often.  Indeed, one of his most famous defenders, Harry Jaffa, has long maintained that Honest Abe was a prolific liar when he was making numerous racist and white supremacist remarks.   He was lying, says Jaffa, just to get himself elected.   In The Lincoln Enigma Gabor Boritt even goes so far in defending Lincoln’s deportation/colonization proposals to say, “This is how honest people lie.”  Well, not exactly.  Truly honest people do not lie. 

The problem with this argument, Joe Sobran has pointed out, is that Lincoln made these kinds of ugly comments even when he was not running for political office.  He did this, I believe, because he believed in these things.

Basler was certainly aware of Lincoln’s voluminous statements in opposition to racial equality.  He denounced “equality between the white and black races” in his August 21, 1858 debate with Stephen Douglas; 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.”  In fact, Lincoln clung to the colonization/deportation idea for the rest of his life.  There are many other similar statements.   Thus, it is not at all a stretch to conclude that Basler’s comment that Lincoln’s words “lacked effectiveness” could be interpreted as that he was insincere.  It also seems to me that Johannsen is right when he further states that “Nearly all of [Lincoln’s] public statements on the slavery question prior to his election as president were delivered with political intent and for political effect.”  As David Donald wrote of Lincoln in Lincoln Reconsidered, “politics was his life.”  In my book I do not rely on Basler alone, but any means, to make my point that Lincoln’s devotion to racial equality was dubious, at best.

Quackenbush apparently believes it is a sign of sincerity for Lincoln to have denounced slavery in one sentence, and then in the next sentence to denounce the abolition of slavery as being even more harmful to human liberty.  (I apparently misread the statement Lincoln once made about “Siamese twins” by relying on a secondary source that got it wrong and will change it if there is a third printing).

Quackenbush takes much out of context and relies exclusively on Lincoln’s own arguments in order to paint as bleak a picture of my book as possible.  For example, in my book I quote Mark Neely as saying that Lincoln exhibited a “gruff and belittling impatience” over constitutional arguments that had stood in the way of his cherished mercantilist economic agenda (protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare, and a federal monopolization of the money supply) for decades.  Quackenbush takes me to task for allegedly implying that Neely wrote that Lincoln opposed the Constitution and not just constitutional arguments. But I argue at great length in the book that Lincoln did resent the Constitution as well as the constitutional arguments that were made by myriad American statesmen, beginning with Jefferson.  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 Lincoln’s behavior, more than his political speeches, demonstrated that he had little regard for the Constitution when it stood in the way of his political ambitions.

One difference between how I present this material and how these others authors present it is that I do not spend most of my time making excuses and bending over backwards to concoct “rationales” for Lincoln’s behavior.  I just present the material.  The back cover of Neely’s book, for example, states that thanks to the book, “Lincoln emerges . . . with his legendary statesmanship intact.”  Neely won a Pulitzer Prize for supposedly pulling Lincoln’s fanny out of the fire with regard to his demolition of civil liberties in the North during the war.

Quackenbush dismisses the historical, constitutional arguments opposed to Lincoln’s mercantilist economic agenda, as Lincoln himself sometimes did,  as “partisan zealotry.”  Earlier in the book I quote James Madison, the father of the Constitution, as vetoing an “internal improvements” bill sponsored by Henry Clay on the grounds that “it does not appear that the power proposed to be exercised in the bill is among the enumerated powers” of the Constitution.  Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, and John Tyler made similar statements.  These were more than partisan arguments by political hacks and zealots.  The father of the Constitution himself, Madison, believed the corporate welfare subsidies that  Lincoln would later champion were unconstitutional. 

Add to this Lincoln’s extraordinary disregard for the Constitution during his entire administration, and it seems absurd for Quackenbush or anyone else to portray him as a champion of the Constitution who was pestered by “political zealots.”  Among Lincoln’s unconstitutional acts were launching an invasion without the consent of Congress, blockading Southern ports before formally declaring war, unilaterally suspending the writ of habeas corpus and arresting and imprisoning thousands of Northern citizens without a warrant, censoring telegraph communications, confiscating private property, including firearms, and effectively gutting the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. 

Even quite worshipful Lincoln biographers and historians called him a “dictator.”  In his book, Constitutional Dictatorship, Clinton Rossiter devoted an entire chapter to Lincoln and calls him a “great dictator” and a “true democrat,” two phrases that are not normally associated with each other.  “Lincoln’s amazing disregard for the . . . Constitution was considered by nobody as legal,” said Rossiter.  Yet Quackenbush throws a fit because I dare to question Lincoln’s devotion to constitutional liberty.

Quackenbush continues to take my statements out of context when commenting on the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and he refuses to admit that Lincoln did in fact lament the demise of the Bank of the United Stated during the debates.  His earlier claim that there was not a single word said during the Lincoln-Douglas debates about economic policy is simply untrue. 

But the larger context is that even though most of the discussion during the debates centered on such issues as the extension of slavery into the new territories, they were really a manifestation of the old debate between the advocates of centralized government (Hamilton, Clay, Webster, Lincoln) and of decentralized government and states’ rights (Jefferson, Jackson, Tyler, Calhoun, Douglas).  At the time of the debates Lincoln had spent about a quarter of a century laboring in the trenches of the Whig and Republican Parties, primarily on behalf of the so-called “American System” of protectionist tariffs, tax subsidies to corporations, and centralized banking.  When the Whig Party collapsed Lincoln assured Illinois voters that there was no essential difference between he two parties.  This is what he and the Whigs and Republicans wanted a centralized government for.  As Basler said, at the time he had no concrete solution to the slavery issue other than to propose sending black people back to Africa, Haiti, or Central America.  He did, however, have a long record of advocating the programs of the “American System” and implementing a financially disastrous $10 million “internal improvements” boondoggle in Illinois in the late 1830s when he was an influential member of  the state legislature. 

Lincoln spent his 25-year off-and-on political career prior to 1857 championing the Whig project of centralized government that would engage in a kind of economic central planning.  When the extension of slavery became the overriding issue of the day he continued to hold the centralizer’s position.  And as soon as he took office, he and the Republican party enacted what James McPherson called a “blizzard of legislation” that finally achieved the “American System,” complete with federal railroad subsidies, a tripling of the average tariff rate that would remain that high or higher long after the war ended, and centralized banking with the National Currency and Legal Tender Acts.  It is in this sense that the Lincoln-Douglas debates really did have important economic ramifications. 

Quackenbush complains that I do not quote Lincoln enough.  He falsely states that there’s only one Lincoln quote in the entire book, which is simply bizarre.  On page 85 alone I quote Lincoln the secessionist, speaking on January 12, 1848 (“The War with Mexico:  Speech in the United States House of Representatives”):  “Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better.  This is a most valuable, a most sacred right --a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world.  Nor is the right confined to cases I which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it.  Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”  That’s four sentences, by my count, and there are plenty of other Lincoln quotes in my book, contrary to Quackenbush’s kooky assertion.

But he has a point:  I chose to focus in my book more on Lincoln’s actions than his words.  After all, even Bill Clinton would look like a brilliant statesman if he were judged exclusively by his pleasant-sounding speeches, many of which were written by the likes of James Carville and Paul Begala.  Yet, this is how many Lincoln scholars seem to do their work, even writing entire books around single short speeches while ignoring much of Lincoln’s actual behavior and policies.

I also stand by my argument that Lincoln was essentially the anti-Jefferson in many ways, including his repudiation of the principle in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.  I don’t see how this can even be debatable.  The Whigs were always the anti-Jeffersonians who battled with the political heirs of Jefferson, such as Andrew Jackson and John Tyler.  Lincoln was solidly in this tradition, even though he often quoted Jefferson for political effect.  He also quoted Scripture a lot even though, as Joe Sobran has pointed out, he never could bring himself to become a believer.

In this regard I believe the Gettysburg Address was mostly sophistry.  As H.L. Mencken once wrote, “it is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.”   It was the Union soldiers in the battle, he wrote, who “actually fought against self determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves.”  Regardless of what one believes was the main cause of the war, it is indeed true that the Confederates no longer consented to being governed by Washington, D.C. and Lincoln waged a war to deny them that right.

It’s interesting that even though the title of Quackenbush’s article had to do with “Evidence of Lincoln’s Tyranny,” in fourteen pages he does not say a single word about the voluminous evidence that I do present, based on widely-published and easily-accessible materials, of Lincoln’s tyrannical behavior in trashing the Constitution and waging war on civilians in violation of international law and codes of morality.  Instead, he focuses on accusations of misplaced quotation marks, footnotes out of order, or misinterpretations of a few quotations. 

April 27, 2002

Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is the author of the LRC #1 bestseller, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Forum/Random House 2002) and professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland.

Copyright 2002 LewRockwell.com

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TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Government
KEYWORDS: dilorenzo; dixielist; lincoln
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Comment #241 Removed by Moderator

To: Ditto
once again, you are welcome to your opinion.

Truman was from Confederate MO & DDE was from Abilene,KS.

for dixie,sw

242 posted on 05/02/2002 9:30:52 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: Ditto
make that Abilene,TX not KS-hit the wrong button.
243 posted on 05/02/2002 9:31:29 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: Non-Sequitur
figures.
244 posted on 05/02/2002 9:57:10 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: muleboy
yep, i think we would have.

our black citizens would certainly have pushed for Wallace, as he got more than 60% of the black vote in EVERY election AND the southland's great un-washed would have tried to re-elect him endlessly.

i just wish we had been FREE all these years to see;nothing (not even Pick-handle Lester Maddox & Bull Connors!)would have been worse than 140 years of damnyankee occupation.

for a FREE dixie REPUBLIC,sw

245 posted on 05/02/2002 10:02:13 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: stand watie
Actually you're still wrong. Eisenhower was born in Dennison, Tx. The family moved to Abilene, Ks. when he was one or two.
246 posted on 05/02/2002 10:43:39 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Mortin Sult
Excellent. You admit that you are indeed George with a new nick. I never said anything about being related to people in those counties, at least not on this thread. I made it clear on the other that I and my family are from York county and that my Confederate ancestors were in the border counties then.

Once again, here are the numbers from the official records in South Carolina: out of 1,800 people arrested (no doubt your 'well known murderers') in the state; August trials in Greenville result in one conviction. November trials in Columbia of 501 men resulted in five (5) convictions, and fifty (50) confessions. Later trials brought the whole number of those imprisoned or fined whether convicted or as a result of confession to eighty-two (82).

This is after after Grant had declared nine upstate counties to be "in a state of rebellion" and after his proclamation had resulted in 1,800 arrests in South Carolina alone, and after he had put those counties under martial law and suspended habeus corpus there.

I posted this in the thread we're talking about when you were using the handle "Who is George Salt". I don't mind posting it again since you have outed yourself by mentioning my relation to people arrested or sought by the occupiers. I never mentioned it here. You were thinking about our earlier discussion.

247 posted on 05/02/2002 11:06:07 AM PDT by Twodees
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To: Lewite
A LOT OF PEOPLE DISAGREE WITH YOU.

```````````````````

BAD NEWS; THIS IS GONNA BE HARD TO SPIN.

===============================

FROM: http://www.historychannel.com/

POLL RESULTS

What was the primary cause of the Civil War?

Slavery 28% 938 votes
State's rights 56% 1916 votes
Trade and tariff policy 9% 318 votes
Western expansion 3% 93 votes
Other 4% 130 votes

Total: Total Votes: 3,395

248 posted on 05/02/2002 1:27:38 PM PDT by one2many
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To: one2many
The famous reliability of both polls and contemporary American knowledge of history, AND internet polls in particular, make this authority unanswerable.
249 posted on 05/02/2002 3:14:38 PM PDT by davidjquackenbush
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To: stand watie
He was born in Denison, TX, but the family moved to Abaline KS when he was an infant. He spent his childhood and school years in Kansas before heading to West Point at age 18.
250 posted on 05/02/2002 3:49:15 PM PDT by Ditto
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To: Non-Sequitur
Abilene,TX SAYS their town is his hometown;it doesn't surprise me that MANY towns would claim one of America's most famous military heroes and/or presidents!

i'd bet the TWO towns in AR, that USED to claim to be wee willie klintoon's hometown don't do so any more! (BTW, he NEVER lived in Hope,AR- it was just ANOTHER in a LONG line of klintoon LIES!) for dixie,sw

251 posted on 05/03/2002 8:19:13 AM PDT by stand watie
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To: stand watie
Dennison, Tx. was his birthplace. But considering that Eisenhower lived in Abilene, Kansas from when he was one until he left for West Point then I would certainly classify that as his home town.
252 posted on 05/03/2002 9:49:31 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: davidjquackenbush
[Lincoln] in his February 27, 1860 Cooper Union speech advocated deporting black people so that “their places be . . . filled up by free white laborers.”

Now, this is another lie. In fact, it is two. Lincoln nowhere in the Cooper Institute Speech said a word about Colonization. And the words about "free white laborers" are from Jefferson. Quoted by Lincoln, to be sure. But from Jefferson.

How long will anyone take this fraud, DiLorenzo, seriously?

His work suggests that we poor mortals are, indeed, under the sway of lies, and "the father of lies."

For Truth,

Richard F.

253 posted on 05/04/2002 5:47:00 PM PDT by rdf
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To: davidjquackenbush
I have read DeLarenzo's book

Lincoln's own statements on secession, race, colonization, and tariff's are...damning.

Lincoln was a tyrant, who subverted the Constitution, and destroyed the seperation of powers, which held the national government in check.

Those who "deify" Lincoln disregard the substantial, historical evidence that, he was the founder of the destruction of the American ideal of limited, decentralised government.

For additional referance, I would reccommend the excellent work, "American Ceasar", and the fine works of Dr. Clyde Wilson. History is a search for truth. Unfortunately, in historical context, the victors get to write the history. Truth is sometimes illusive.

David, I have a library for you to begin with... You may have the disadvantage of a life-time of government school prejudice to overcome, but keep digging. Even the victor can not overcome a desire to learn.

For Southern Independence Larry Salley

254 posted on 05/07/2002 7:52:06 PM PDT by l8pilot
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To: rdf
Now, this is another lie. In fact, it is two. Lincoln nowhere in the Cooper Institute Speech said a word about Colonization. And the words about "free white laborers" are from Jefferson. Quoted by Lincoln, to be sure. But from Jefferson.

Actually, it is Lincoln's own words. Further, it is consistant with Lincoln's other statements on Blacks. For the uninformed, I would reccommend, "American Ceaser", and the excellent works of Dr. Clyde Wilson.

The Empire can not stand to see their gods attacked.

For Southern Independence

Larry Salley

255 posted on 05/07/2002 8:29:54 PM PDT by l8pilot
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To: l8pilot
The words are from Jefferson's Autobiography.

Lincoln is using them to show that the humanity and equality of the blacks was in the American mind from the founding.

Let me quote a little more from Jefferson, the author of the Declaration:

"Nothing is more certainly written in the in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them. It is still in our power... [here follows the rest of DiLorenzo's quote] ..."

In other words, Lincoln is quoting Jefferson, DiLorenzo is wrong, and Jefferson, though advocating separation and colonization, is doing so in the name of equality and freedom.

And all the parts of the Cooper Institute Speech in which Lincoln speaks in his own voice say not a word about colonization or filling the territories with whites.

For God's sake, don't spread falsehoods, and don't trust those who do.

Richard Ferrier,

President,

Declaration Foundation

256 posted on 05/07/2002 10:05:22 PM PDT by rdf
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To: l8pilot
For the uninformed, I would reccommend, "American Ceaser"

The careful scholar who wrote this book ascribed to Lincoln a spurious quote from Tom Dixon's novel, The Clansman.

I would recommend it to those who wish to be uninformed. And, in the same spirit, I would recommend DiLorenzo's screed.

Cheers,

Richard F.

257 posted on 05/07/2002 10:17:10 PM PDT by rdf
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To: l8pilot
Thanks for sharing your creed.
258 posted on 05/07/2002 11:07:42 PM PDT by davidjquackenbush
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To: rdf
You wrote that the author(s) who subscribed to the origninal sources used Thomas Dixon's, bood, "The Klansman"..

Even if you are correct, what is the referance, and what is your point?

259 posted on 05/17/2002 7:26:01 PM PDT by l8pilot
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To: l8pilot
Actually they are Jefferson's words, as Lincoln makes clear.

In the language of Mr. Jefferson, uttered many years ago, "It is still in our power to direct the process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably, and in such slow degrees, as that the evil will wear off insensibly; and their places be, pari passu, filled up by free white laborers. If, on the contrary, it is left to force itself on, human nature must shudder at the prospect held up."

260 posted on 05/17/2002 7:30:48 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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