Was Lincoln a Tyrant?

LewRockwell.com ^ | April 29, 2002 | Thomas DiLorenzo

[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 Thomas DiLorenzo Archives LRC needs your support. Please donate.

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[l8pilot]

If true history bothers you, find another field. DeLarenzo has done an excellent job of finding original sources. He qoutes Lincoln's words, verbatum... what is your problem...except, perhaps, it iteferes with you version of "history"?

[muleboy]

Bump for Dixie!

[davidjquackenbush]

Name one "original source" that DiLorenzo found, even a quotation. It's funny that the more we point out that he can't even quote competently, much less read any original sources himself (I doubt if he even read a single Lincoln speech through), the more some people assert that he is a good historian.

What original research in particular impressed you with DiLorenzo's book?

[l8pilot]

I would refer you to "American Cesear", or "When in the Course of Human Events"... or any of the excellent works of Dr. Clyde Wilson.

Truth is a powerful enemy. I am sorry that it destroys your gods. Lincoln has become one of the gods of "Americanity".

When we, as a people, can substitute the real God for that of the Empire, we will become rightoures. Lincoln was an Emperor. He subverted freedom for the empire. When Southron, Christians can look upon the flag of the new Republic, with the same revulsion our ancestors saw it,as being the enemy of freedom, we stand a chance of independence.

After 24 years service in the US Marine Corps, I weep at the fact that I can not raise the US flag. Our nation has betrayed us. We no longer share the same ideals.

The North should have it's gun control, it's high taxes,it's centralised government. The North east and the west-coast should have Al Gore for President. They should have their "secure", centralised government.

After all, that's who they voted for...

Give us freedom. Let the South leave. Let us have our own nation. We don't buy the propaganda, "One nation"..."Indivisible"...etc.. We are tired of fighting ya'll's wars. My son will fight for the South, not for "America". I'am sorry, you can't have him.

Larry Salley

Citadel, Class of '77'

Officer of Marines, Retd

[davidjquackenbush]

I'm sorry you don't feel well.

I didn't catch your answer to this: "What original research in particular impressed you with DiLorenzo's book?"

[rdf]

Newly relevant.

Richard F.

[rdf]

Thought you should see this one.

Cheers,

Richard F.

[rdf]

I hate it when flaming causes a thread in which I had invested thought and care is pulled. Can anyone email me a saved copy of the last Lincoln/vonmises/Dilorenz/quackenbush thread? Thanks, rdf

[GOPcapitalist]

Thanks for the ping. It seems that the former thread has been pulled, but shall we continue here?

Having read the article of this thread plus the early responses to it by DiLorenzo's critics, I must conclude that it is primarily more of the same - petty griping about the interpretations of Basler and Neely.

I see that David Quackenbush partially responded to having been called on his bizarre assertion about a purported absence of Lincoln quotes in DiLorenzo's book. He does so by saying the counterexample offered by DiLorenzo was merely a header into a chapter. But that does not address the error of his previous assertion. I have pulled out my recently purchased copy of DiLorenzo's book and invite anyone to follow along.

- there is a 2 sentence quote of Lincoln on page 10.
- there is a lengthy 3 sentence quote of Lincoln on page 11.
- there are 2 near-complete sentence quotations of Lincoln found in the text of DiLorenzo's work on page 12. Shortly after that is the now-corrected siamese twins quote.
- there is another 2 sentence quote of Lincoln below it on page 12.
- there is a 1 sentence Lincoln quote on the crossover from page 12 to 13.
- there is are 2 sentece Lincoln quotes, plus about a dozen partial ones, on page 14.
- there is a 2 sentence Lincoln quote on page 15.
- there is a 1 sentence Lincoln quote plus serveral partial ones on page 17.

See what I'm getting at? And it continues like this in places all over the book. Contrary to Quackenbush's heavily emphasized assertion, there are several multi-sentence quotations of Lincoln himself. The one on pages 21-22 is a full six sentences long for that matter. So I think it is safe to say that Quackenbush's assertion was itself an error no less incorrect than the gravest of his own allegations against DiLorenzo.

[GOPcapitalist]

To borrow from Lincoln, he finds the words, "horse chestnut" and mistakes them to mean a chestnut horse.

Interesting. If I recall correctly, Lincoln used that particular line in order to refute what he characterized as an attempt by Douglas to portray him as a proponent of "social and political equality with the Negro"

[GOPcapitalist]

Titus Fikus is another one of Mortin's aliases. I think it is the one that he used to espouse marxist doctrine in his posts, as in quoting lengthy passages from the tirades of Karl Marx himself. Like all his other aliases, that one got banned too when he shot off his obnoxious profane yankee mouth.

[GOPcapitalist]

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.

It seems that Lincoln's quoting of Jefferson came as an attempt to signify the position was shared between the two. The quote very specifically advocates colonization, stating its endorsement for the "process of emancipation, and deportation, peaceably." Lincoln himself, throughout his career, repeatedly turned to colonization as a favored solution. He is on record stating that his own inclinations lend him to support that policy and is known to have undertaken efforts to pursue it during his presidency. It is therefore only reasonable to conclude that Lincoln was advocating this position.

[Twodees]

I guess you noticed that the ferret pinged you here right before someone whined to the AM to pull the thread we were on earlier.

What the cultists would really love would be to see all of DiLorenzo's books burned.

[rdf]

Perhaps we have a misunderstanding due to hasty reading. Your list of quotations ... and, as you know, misquotations ... from Lincoln is certainly more than "a sentence."

I repeat your words below:

**********

"I have pulled out my recently purchased copy of DiLorenzo's book and invite anyone to follow along.

- there is a 2 sentence quote of Lincoln on page 10.
- there is a lengthy 3 sentence quote of Lincoln on page 11.
- there are 2 near-complete sentence quotations of Lincoln found in the text of DiLorenzo's work on page 12. Shortly after that is the now-corrected siamese twins quote.
- there is another 2 sentence quote of Lincoln below it on page 12.
- there is a 1 sentence Lincoln quote on the crossover from page 12 to 13.
- there is are 2 sentence Lincoln quotes, plus about a dozen partial ones, on page 14.
- there is a 2 sentence Lincoln quote on page 15.
- there is a 1 sentence Lincoln quote plus serveral partial ones on page 17.

See what I'm getting at? And it continues like this in places all over the book. Contrary to Quackenbush's heavily emphasized assertion, there are several multi-sentence quotations of Lincoln himself. The one on pages 21-22 is a full six sentences long for that matter. So I think it is safe to say that Quackenbush's assertion was itself an error no less incorrect than the gravest of his own allegations against DiLorenzo."

***********

First, let me give you Q.'s exact words:

++++++++

"I will preface the fourth, and most striking instance of Dr. DiLorenzo's creative textual interpretations by noting that only in two chapters of the book, "Lincoln's Opposition to Racial Equality" and "Why Not Peaceful Emancipation?," does Dr. DiLorenzo quote so much as a full sentence of Abraham Lincoln's words, with the single exception of a sentence from the first inaugural.

This in itself is a fascinating demonstration of DiLorenzo's method of scholarship. The vast majority of a book entitled "The Real Lincoln" contains precisely one quoted sentence from Lincoln. But it is filled with extensive quotations from other historical figures, scholars, etc., and above all with Dr. DiLorenzo's confident narrative explaining to us how all these things reveal the real Lincoln. Lincoln himself, however, is muzzled."

+++++++++

Now, this is substantially, but not perfectly, true. I find Epigrams from Lincoln at the heads of Chapters 4 and 5, and, at the start of Ch. 6, an order of Lincoln's to Gen. Dix, discussed here at length, BTW, and revealed to be grossly misleading as a proof text of his "dictatorial" tendencies.

Besides these, there is the single sentence Q. mentions, and one sentence from a letter, regarding Sumter, which Q. missed.

That's it, so far as I can see, from page 54 to page 279.

Recall what Q. had said, "Lincoln himself, however, is muzzled." And, "the vast majority ... contains ... one quoted sentence." I grant you that the actual number is two, not one, in the 225 pages. You may make of this what you will.

The epigrams are no part of the argument, misleading, and not sourced. No one should take them as an effort by Dilorenzo to let Lincoln speak for himself. I had rather not argue that here, for brevity's sake, but I will if need be.

Recall, too, that the book's title is, "The Real Lincoln."

The Real Lincoln distinguished secession from revolution. He wrote to Wallace that the tariff was not a lively issue, and that one should wait for its old opponents to see its merits before pressing the issue. He released the editors in NY when it became clear that they were only pawns of the subversive "Gold Hoax" plotters ... and those editors went on to revile him and work for the election of McClellan.

The Real Lincoln thought hard about the Constitution, which he loved, and he had, and gave, reasons for what he did and how he understood his duties to that Constitution. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps not. Perhaps a mixture, depending on the case.

But the Real Lincoln never appears to make his case in this awful book, and hence that case is never confronted. Throughout, but especially after page 54, DiLorenzo is the hanging judge in a Kangaroo court. And the accused is muzzled, just as Q. says.

This has become over long. I will respond to the claims that the distortions of Basler and Neeley are unimportant another time.

Regards,

Richard F.

[Quix]

I know from an emotional, psychodynamic standpoint which author reads more like the personality of a tyrant TO ME . . .

And his initials are not L i n c o l n but instead

D i L o r e n z o.

But nevermind, the delusional tend to be only concerned with facts which support their delusions. . . their lives evidently lacking other, more constructive enterprises to focus on.

[rdf]

Having read the article of this thread plus the early responses to it by DiLorenzo's critics, I must conclude that it is primarily more of the same - petty griping about the interpretations of Basler and Neely.

I had just finished working out a reply to your 6 points below when the thread was pulled. Let's see if I can do it again.

********

Second, that particular link may be boiled down into the following.

1. Asserting upon simple self authority that Lincoln said "practically nothing" on economics during his rise to national power, and accordingly ruling DiLorenzo's economic theory of Lincoln as unsupported.

It is hard to prove a negative.

Q., and I, had done a search at the Basler site to see whether indeed Lincoln had said practically nothing on economics during this period, and I can tell you it is, in fact true. There were the two speeches you have posted, both of which were in fact more about slavery or secession than economics, and about 6-10 very diffident letters. That's it.

2. Disputing a characterization of the degree economics were present in his senate campaign debates made by DiLorenzo in another article.

This is no dispute; it's a fact. The debates, as McPherson says, contain nothing about economics, especially about "Whig Economics." Read them. And Dr. D. did not only say this in his article, it's on page 68 of his book. And it's false.

3. Disputing DiLorenzo's interpretation of a single one line Roy Basler quote.

Balser is a weighty authority. Dr. D. misrepresents him as saying Lincoln was insincere about slavery and uncaring about human equality. That's a falsehood. And it matters to the line of argument in the book.

4. Disputing DiLorenzo's interpretation of a single passage by Mark Neely.

Neeley is another important authority, and DiLorenzo garbles his words to say that Lincoln seethed against the Constitution. That, too, is false, and very material to Dr. D.'s argument.

5. The bizarre assertion that DiLorenzo quoted Lincoln himself only once in his book.

Discussed above.

6. Citing a single now-corrected error of context in one of DiLorenzo's quotes of Lincoln

Good. But it's not the only one. And it's inexcusable. I wasted some days last month trying to sort it out, since I felt right away that it didn't sound like Lincoln. Dr. D. says he thought it did sound like Lincoln. He has no ear for Lincoln because he does not understand him in the least. And he despises his Imaginary Lincoln.

The error, as you well know, consists in taking words that Lincoln vehemently rejects, from a VA clergyman, in the Clay Eulogy of 1852, as Lincoln's own. [pg 12] They are footnoted as from the 1858 debates. And on pages 13-15, Dr. D. quotes other passages from the Clay Eulogy, including texts immediately next to the VA clergyman text. That is either near criminal negligence, or lying.

Dr. D. also has the DoI meaning by equality, the "equality of the people of the several states." [pg 86] Either that means NC is equal to NY, etc., or it means that Jefferson had in mind only the people [citizens?] of the 13 colonies, soon to be states. So much for "ALL MEN are created equal."

He has Lincoln, in the Illinois Legislature, urging some racist legislation, in 1857. That's false. Lincoln was not in the legislature then.

This grows tiresome.

Let me make a suggestion. Free yourself from this sophist, and make your own case, as you have dne before. There is no need for your cause to be poisoned by a fraud or a fool.

Regards,

Richard F.

[rdf]

All is not lost!

I find I can repost this.

Dear Dawg,

I will provide the first of these links for you, though I doubt it will make any difference.

DiLorenzo's many errors of fact and his tendentious manner of interpretation have been documented here at length for 3 months, with little acknowledgment by defenders of the "lost cause." There is a current thread by a well-read Civil War expert that adds half a dozen or more instances of Dr. D.'s folly, and I can give a link to that, too, if it would prove helpful.

A General Response to DiLorenzo's Thesis and two more important errors

All of these errors concern "evidence" of grave importance to DiLorenzo's principal points, namely, that Lincoln was a "racist," and that he cared little or not at all about human equality, but was driven by an econmic agenda in 1854-60 and perhaps beyond then.

I cannot spend the whole day finding and pasting in speeches and other material to prove to the blind how wrong they are, but I can recommend reading the key speeches: the Peoria Speech, which Lincoln is quoting extensively in the August 21st Debate ... and which DiLorenzo misquotes ... the Hartford and Pittsburg Speeches, which GOPcapitalist shamelessly selects from to prove a conclusion opposite to the general tenor of both speeches, and the two letters to Wallace, which essentially indicate that Lincoln has no intention of pushing the tariff question, since public opinion was against that of the "Old Whigs." All these things, and much more, may be found at the complete Lincoln site [Basler's collection, searchable] on the net.

That something had to be done with the tariff to raise funds for a govenment recovering from a depression is a not very astonishing positiion for any politician to hold in 1859-60, and in fact the bill was passed, with Democrat support, and signed by Pres. Buchanan just before Lincoln took office.

Returning to DiLorenzo, other remarkable errors include his snipping a quote to make Lincoln in favor of "any legislation for reclaiming of their fugitives." [pg. 13, see footnote 11] having Lincoln address Illinois Legislators, as a member in 1857, when Lincoln was not in the legislature, [pg. 18] and making the preposterous claim that "[W]hen it [the Declaration] mentions equality, it is equality of the people of the several states." [pg 86] This vaguely put assertion either means that Jefferson boldly declared that it was self-evident that New York was equal to North Carolina, or that the people [citizens?] of all of the 13 colonies were equal, each to each, not what all sensible men take Jefferson to have meant, "ALL MEN are created equal."

Since I will not be able to spend much more time here today, let me add one last general point bearing on this book and the whole debate over secession. DiLorenzo and many of his crowd never even consider the possibility of a distinction between legal secession and revolution, with an appeal to "the laws of nature and of nature's God."

Now, even if that distinction is ill-made, which I admantly deny, it was operative the minds of Lincoln, J.Q. Adams, Madison, and many, many other American Statesmen. Failure even to notice the distinction makes DiLorenzo misrepresent these men, espcially Adams and Madison.

There, that's it for now. This was probably too long, but I've had it with the device of folks on one thread saying, OK, he made a little mistake. What about "x,y,z" which you haven't spoken to? We have spoken to these things, here, at WND, at the Declaration Foundation Forum, and elsewhere. We have proved the book is tendentious, sloppy, and essentially false.

Maybe now good people can read a scholarly but accessible book like William Miller's Lincoln's virtues, and think about his accurate and not at all one-sided presentation of the questions Lincoln's statesmanship poses.

Best to you,

Richard F.

[rdf]

More salvage.

You wrote:

*********

This [DiLorenzo's latest] is really astonishingly and pathetically dishonest. It's remarkable. In the passage I quoted, he was making fun of the idea of racial equality.

Well the first thing is that DiLorenzo says the quote he mangles was in the first Lincoln Douglas Debate. But it wasn't. It was in the eulogy of Clay. One of the things we nailed DiLorenzo and his 60 books on was that he didn't know the source of what he was quoting.

Then Lincoln was simply not "making fun of the idea of racial equality" in that speech. He characterized the passage, the letter to a newspaper of someone who WAS making fun of the idea of racial equality as "extraordinary language" which sounded "strangely in republican America" and was not heard in the fresher days of the Republic."

So At the very kindest, DiLorenzo persists in misconstruing a passage easily understood by people with far fewer than 60 books on LIncoln in their shelves -- but who have actually read the books instead of mining them for useful quotes.

It turned out that the context of this quote, among so many making essentially the same point, had Lincoln attributing the view to someone else.

Yes, he attributed it to someone else -- to a letter published in a Saint Louis, MO newspaper -- with language which made it clear that he disavowed the sentiment.

Further Dilorenzo makes it sound like this was the only error in the book. It's not, it's just one of the juiciest -- one that shows how poorly he checks his stuff before he publishes it. A college kid who made that kind of error, if caught, would be excoriated. But DiLorenzo, having graduated from college, no longer has the time or the inclination to find out what he's quoting and whether his quotes are accurate. It's hard to believe.

And then, when caught out, he deceives the von mises interviewer by a complete mischaracterization of the error.

You guys debate Lincoln all you want. But there can be no serious debate on whether DiLorenzo cares about the truth. He doesn't, at least not in his book nor in his defense of it. It makes me want to keep my kid home from college if this is what the professors are purveying in the place of knowledge or research.

*********

Courtesy of rdf.

Cheers,

Richard --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[GOPcapitalist]

"I will preface the fourth, and most striking instance of Dr. DiLorenzo's creative textual interpretations by noting that only in two chapters of the book, "Lincoln's Opposition to Racial Equality" and "Why Not Peaceful Emancipation?," does Dr. DiLorenzo quote so much as a full sentence of Abraham Lincoln's words, with the single exception of a sentence from the first inaugural. This in itself is a fascinating demonstration of DiLorenzo's method of scholarship. The vast majority of a book entitled "The Real Lincoln" contains precisely one quoted sentence from Lincoln. But it is filled with extensive quotations from other historical figures, scholars, etc., and above all with Dr. DiLorenzo's confident narrative explaining to us how all these things reveal the real Lincoln. Lincoln himself, however, is muzzled."

In other words, arbitrarily exclude the meat of the book and you are left with a book absent of the very thing you excluded. Talk about convenience.

Now, this is substantially, but not perfectly, true.

It is far from substantially true. The central statement of that assertion is, arbitrarily excluding dozens upon dozens of Lincoln quotes by exempting certain chapters, "The vast majority of a book entitled "The Real Lincoln" contains precisely one quoted sentence from Lincoln." As you yourself conceded, this is not the case. Lincoln's quotes occur elsewhere in more than one case.

So, instead of conceding the error, you rush to his defense asserting that it may not have been perfectly true, but it was substantially true. This is particularly interesting because it demonstrates your granting of a significantly greater ammount of fudge room to an ally than you ever allowed to DiLorenzo, even though your ally's error was at least as significant as those you allege of DiLorenzo.

The epigrams are no part of the argument, misleading, and not sourced.

I would beg to differ, noting that each is printed under an applicable heading. You yourself even conceded just sentences prior that the quoted order to Dix was offered as "a proof text of his [Lincoln's] "dictatorial" tendencies." Now you say it wasn't any part of the argument. Are you now changing your mind?

No one should take them as an effort by Dilorenzo to let Lincoln speak for himself.

Then what about the extensive quotation of Lincoln contained throughout the chapters that were conveniently exempted from consideration? It seems to me that, in places where DiLorenzo allowed Lincoln "to speak" in vollume, Quackenbush has conveniently exempted them out of his statement in order that he may find that they are not there. But sure enough, when he does that it turns out that they are still there in other chapters and he's missed them!

In short, the entire argument that Lincoln was "muzzled" is a self constructed charade designed to remove Lincoln's extensive presence where it appears most frequently and then proclaim that presence to have dissappeared. But as with any poorly constructed charade, it turns out, sure enough, that the remainder was understated. Further, it turns out that his error alone is as grave as many of the allegations you have made against DiLorenzo, yet rather than apply the same standard of judgment to an ally, you let the whole thing slip declaring it imperfect but substantially true.

The Real Lincoln distinguished secession from revolution. He wrote to Wallace that the tariff was not a lively issue

Yes, in 1859 when he did not want it to arise as a campaign battle. In that same letter, he also proclaimed his support of the tariff to have been as strong as ever and expressed his anticipation that it would be made into a reality in the near future. He also told an audience not three weeks before his inauguration that, in the next legislative session, "no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff."

and that one should wait for its old opponents to see its merits before pressing the issue.

You are misinterpreting his statement. The actual quote from the letter was "my general impression is, that the necessity for a protective tariff will, ere long, force it's old opponents to take it up; and then it's old friends can join in, and establish it on a more firm and durable basis." Simply put, he thought himself to have been right on the tariff issue and thought that the practice of its absence would prove that they needed to reinstate it. He was not waiting in order that he may show tariff opponents its merits. He was waiting because he thought in short time, the political policy of a high tariff's absence would create the circumstances that presented an opportunity to call for a tariff.

[rdf]

This will be short and sweet.

You misconstrue everything, both from me and Q. and from Lincoln.

Over 200 pages of this misbegotten book give Lincoln essentially no voice.

The parts that do quote him misquote him egregiously.

The author is a revisionist, and if he wants a hearing at all, he should take note of the contrary position. He does not.

"Eyes he has, but sees not. Ears, but hears not."

Those who support him are like him.

I see I wasted my time in giving you reasons.

That grieves me.

Liberty and Union, one and inseparable, now and forever!

Richard F.