Was Lincoln a Tyrant?

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

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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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As for the 4-5 complaints, if that is not so, why then do you not move beyond them?

I did this above.

In case you missed it, I repeat, with minor edits.

********

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."

...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 the sophistry of "legal secession" and a justified 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.

****

There you have some of what you ask for.

Regards,

Richard F.

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That's it for me tonight, and I may not post for several days.

I have to give a speech in Ohio on Friday, and I'll be away from my keyboard starting sometime tomorrow.

Best to all,

Richard F.

[GOPcapitalist]

McPherson says "received not a word in these debates"

The bank recieved more than a word. Slavery was the topic, but the bank definately recieved a word. Therefore McPherson overstated in his characterization.

[GOPcapitalist]

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]

The person who snipped that quote is you just now. DiLorenzo quotes the segment reading "When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives"

The entirity of the sentence states "When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one." It is truncated for brevity and directness, but the quote itself is valid in DiLorenzo. Try again.

having Lincoln address Illinois Legislators, as a member in 1857, when Lincoln was not in the legislature, [pg. 18]

This appears to be nothing more than a typo, likely referring to 1837. Unless you are in the business of obsessive pettyness, this is not the damning error you make it out to be. Try again.

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]

As I noted previously, that is a matter of opinion that, if anything, would require DiLorenzo's clarification to discuss properly. I guess that makes three strikes. Got anything else?

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.

Perhaps you should step back and cool down for a second before proceding. Could not the fact that obviously many people don't think you are addressing the whole thing evidence that there might be some truth to that? It is easy to think of yourself as having done so when you've participated in many heated debates. But that may not necessarily be the case.

Speaking from personal experience upon my entry into this debate, I have read what I believe to be the bulk of your articles and David Quackenbush's articles on this subject. This includes your World Net Daily articles and interview plus several posted on the declaration foundation website. Most of these have also been pasted here on FR as well. Of what I have seen, it rarely moves beyond these 4 or 5 or 6 petty little complaints beaten down to an absurdly tedious and obsessive pulp of semantic nonsense. When you do leave those passages, it is only in general terms, and then sure enough you return to those passages and continue to squeeze them for something more. The only thing remaining for you to do is convert these 5 passages into latin, flip them upside down, and look for a secret confederate code announcing to all the rebels in hiding that the time has come for the south to rise again.

I would also venture to say that beyond those 5 or so passages, you start to run dry. Your complaints with DiLorenzo become weaker and weaker. Witness the recent list you provided above as evidence. One is a complaint over what appears by all reasonable means to have been an innocent typo, perhaps even made by the publisher and not DiLorenzo himself for all we know, that ammounts to a difference of a single digit in a year's date. Another complaint is over the fact that DiLorenzo dared engage in the common and acceptable practice of truncating a quote while using it within a sentence. Your third is with a vague characterization, possibly of personal opinion, about the DoI that, IMHO, would require further clarification from DiLorenzo himself before either of us could accurately debate what he means by it and what the merits of his argument for it happen to be. In short, you're out of ammo to fire.

We have proved the book is tendentious, sloppy, and essentially false.

No, you've lodged 4 or 5 isolated complaints with the specifics of its text, many of them long since addressed and an equally many number of them ammounting to petty nonsense.

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DiLorenzo quotes these words

"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives."

Note the period.

Lincoln actually said:

"When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one."

Your comment was:

"It is truncated for brevity and directness, but the quote itself is valid in DiLorenzo."

Dear capitalist,

If you can't see the difference between a promise to support any legislation, and to support legislation strongly qualifed [the standard of proof is, after all, rather high in Murder cases ...]I hardly know what will move your mind. That the details of a Fugitive Slave Law were under dispute, even among those who would pledge to support one, is all over the historical record, including Lincoln's first inaugural. Moreover, Lincoln's willingness to support a reasonable law of this kind comes from his sense of duty to uphold the Constitution, which DiLorenzo claims was non-existent.

This is most likely my last reply until late Sunday.

Happy Flag Day to you and all!

Richard F.

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I have 5 minutes.

The bank recieved more than a word. Slavery was the topic, but the bank definately recieved a word. Therefore McPherson overstated in his characterization.

Does the word, 'evasion' mean anything to you?

And why did you not respond to the most fundamental point I made, about secession and revolution?

That is what the CSA apologists always run away from.

And for good reason.

Cheers,

Richard F.

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I have 5 minutes more.

Let me be blunt.

To use the 1839 speech of J.Q. Adams to support secession is lying at a level not seen since May of 1945.

Or, perhaps, since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Have a nice day.

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Ping!

I'm outta here

[GOPcapitalist]

DiLorenzo quotes these words "When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives." Note the period.

Actually, you are incorrect. DiLorenzo quoted that segment of Lincoln's statement within the syntax of his own sentence. As it was not a stand alone quotation, but a grammatically truncated quotation being used in DiLorenzo's own original sentence, your charge is faulty.

Lincoln actually said: "When they remind us of their constitutional rights, I acknowledge them, not grudgingly, but fully, and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the reclaiming of their fugitives, which should not, in its stringency, be more likely to carry a free man into slavery, than our ordinary criminal laws are to hang an innocent one."

That's nice. Did you retype that yourself or cut and paste it from the place where I had included it in my previous post?

Dear capitalist, If you can't see the difference between a promise to support any legislation, and to support legislation strongly qualifed [the standard of proof is, after all, rather high in Murder cases ...]I hardly know what will move your mind.

Dear Richard,

My mind need not be moved as the argument is not made that Lincoln's support for such legislation was unqualified, but rather that Lincoln in fact supported such legislation. I would further note that if you cannot distinguish between a properly truncated quotation included within the syntax of an original sentence and a quotation standing independent in its entirity, you have little standing from which to undertake the textual criticism of DiLorenzo that you have purported yourself to attempt.

[GOPcapitalist]

The bank recieved more than a word. Slavery was the topic, but the bank definately recieved a word. Therefore McPherson overstated in his characterization. Does the word, 'evasion' mean anything to you?

Yes. Does it mean anything to you? I ask because, ever since it was pointed out that McPherson's explicit statement, that of not one word, was itself faulty, you have been evading the reality that he himself commits the very charge of overstatement you allege of others upon the authority of his quote.

And why did you not respond to the most fundamental point I made, about secession and revolution?

In light of its being a matter of your own assertion rather than a valid complaint of factual error against DiLorenzo as you appear to present it to be, it need not be rebutted in more than a word. That is, unless you are interested in discussing it as an issue. Are you?

I would additionally note, and validly so, that if you intend to make the issue of your charge, that of unresponsiveness beyond what rejection of your point I have given, please be informed that even the strongest of your arguments in this direction cannot even hope to approach the scale and vollume of complete unresponsiveness on your part to countless numbers of responses and arguments I have put before you. You speak of running away, yet do not bother to notice your own feet are moving you in a direction opposite from me at a pace thrice that of the fastest you allege. Curious.

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Here is what DiLorenzo ignores, and dishonestly so.

James Madison to Daniel Webster

15 Mar. 1833Writings 9:604--5

I return my thanks for the copy of your late very powerful Speech in the Senate of the United S. It crushes "nullification" and must hasten the abandonment of "Secession." But this dodges the blow by confounding the claim to secede at will, with the right of seceding from intolerable oppression. The former answers itself, being a violation, without cause, of a faith solemnly pledged. The latter is another name only for revolution, about which there is no theoretic controversy. Its double aspect, nevertheless, with the countenance recd from certain quarters, is giving it a popular currency here which may influence the approaching elections both for Congress & for the State Legislature. It has gained some advantage also, by mixing itself with the question whether the Constitution of the U.S. was formed by the people or by the States, now under a theoretic discussion by animated partizans.

It is fortunate when disputed theories, can be decided by undisputed facts. And here the undisputed fact is, that the Constitution was made by the people, but as imbodied into the several states, who were parties to it and therefore made by the States in their highest authoritative capacity. They might, by the same authority & by the same process have converted the Confederacy into a mere league or treaty; or continued it with enlarged or abridged powers; or have imbodied the people of their respective States into one people, nation or sovereignty; or as they did by a mixed form make them one people, nation, or sovereignty, for certain purposes, and not so for others.

The Constitution of the U.S. being established by a Competent authority, by that of the sovereign people of the several States who were the parties to it, it remains only to inquire what the Constitution is; and here it speaks for itself. It organizes a Government into the usual Legislative Executive & Judiciary Departments; invests it with specified powers, leaving others to the parties to the Constitution; it makes the Government like other Governments to operate directly on the people; places at its Command the needful Physical means of executing its powers; and finally proclaims its supremacy, and that of the laws made in pursuance of it, over the Constitutions & laws of the States; the powers of the Government being exercised, as in other elective & responsible Governments, under the controul of its Constituents, the people & legislatures of the States, and subject to the Revolutionary Rights of the people in extreme cases.

It might have been added, that whilst the Constitution, therefore, is admitted to be in force, its operation, in every respect must be precisely the same, whether its authority be derived from that of the people, in the one or the other of the modes, in question; the authority being equally Competent in both; and that, without an annulment of the Constitution itself its supremacy must be submitted to.

The only distinctive effect, between the two modes of forming a Constitution by the authority of the people, is that if formed by them as imbodied into separate communities, as in the case of the Constitution of the U.S. a dissolution of the Constitutional Compact would replace them in the condition of separate communities, that being the Condition in which they entered into the compact; whereas if formed by the people as one community, acting as such by a numerical majority, a dissolution of the compact would reduce them to a state of nature, as so many individual persons. But whilst the Constitutional compact remains undissolved, it must be executed according to the forms and provisions specified in the compact. It must not be forgotten, that compact, express or implied is the vital principle of free Governments as contradistinguished from Governments not free; and that a revolt against this principle leaves no choice but between anarchy and despotism.

The Founders' Constitution Volume 1, Chapter 3, Document 14 http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s14.html The University of Chicago Press

The Writings of James Madison. Edited by Gaillard Hunt. 9 vols. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1900--1910. See also: Federalist

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The bank recieved more than a word. Slavery was the topic, but the bank definately recieved a word. Therefore McPherson overstated in his characterization.

This is about as rational as asserting that Jesus of Nazareth had an obsession with agricultural policy. After all, "He made it a point to discuss viniculture in nearly all of his parables!"

McPherson and I say, on the contrary, "there is not a word about agricultural policy in any of the Gospels."

And if some literalist simpleton cites the number of times wheat or grapes show up, we smile and pity the poor fool.

Have a nice day.

Richard F.

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I wrote:

"And why did you not respond to the most fundamental point I made, about secession and revolution?"

And you replied:

In light of its being a matter of your own assertion rather than a valid complaint of factual error against DiLorenzo as you appear to present it to be, it need not be rebutted in more than a word. That is, unless you are interested in discussing it as an issue. Are you?

As time, and my good wife permit, I am very willing to discuss this.

And as my post above proves, DiLorenzo is, once more, involved in a gross factual error.

But then, who is amazed at that, except for neo-reb fanatics?

The sun rises in the East, water is wet, man was made for woman, and woman for man, pigs can't fly, and Dilorezo is an idiot, a sophist, and a liar.

Some things are so obvious that to prove them is tedious.

Cheers,

Richard F.

[GOPcapitalist]

This is about as rational as asserting that Jesus of Nazareth had an obsession with agricultural policy. After all, "He made it a point to discuss viniculture in nearly all of his parables!" McPherson and I say, on the contrary, "there is not a word about agricultural policy in any of the Gospels."

Your analogy is faulty. It misstates, and perhaps intentionally so, McPherson's statements. Here is the actual:

"Tariffs, banks, internal improvements, corruption, and other staples of American politics received not a word in these debates"

As I noted, that is simply false. While I will consent that DiLorenzo, particularly in the editorial's assertion, overstates the presence in the debates, it is undeniable that it was mentioned. McPherson says in the most specific of terms, "not a word," that no such thing occured. Yet it did, even if only briefly. Therefore McPherson overstated. No ammount of straw grasping or faulty analogy will get you around that simple straight forward fact, Richard.

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Here is what DiLorenzo says:

"In virtually every one of the Lincoln Douglas debates, Lincoln made it a point to champion the nationalization of money and to demonize Jackson and the Democrats for their opposition to it."

This is false.

He may be a fool, he may be a liar, he may have personal problems ... whatever.

He does not declare, in a published book, the truth.

And this is one of dozens of such cases.

Face it.

Cheers,

Richard F.

[GOPcapitalist]

Records of the Federal Convention, May 31, 1787

[1:54; Madison, 31 May]

The last clause of Resolution 6. authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole agst. a delinquent State came next into consideration.

Mr. Madison, observed that the more he reflected on the use of force, the more he doubted the practicability, the justice and the efficacy of it when applied to people collectively and not individually.-, A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force agst. a State, would look more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound. He hoped that such a system would be framed as might render this recourse unnecessary, and moved that the clause be postponed. This motion was agreed to nem. con.

[1:61; McHenry, 31 May]

And to call forth the force of the union against any member of the union failing to fulfil its duty under the articles thereof.

postponed.

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Would you care to read, and think about, the excerpt from our book, or Madison's letter to Webster?

You ask for more fundamental objections to Dr. D., besides those that show he is careless or sloppy or a fraud.

Well, I've done it, more than once.

What about the secession/revolution distinction? It's fundamental, and grossly ignored by Dr. D.

You have Madison's own words on it. Was he senile or dreaming or out to lunch ... or just having a bad day?

And how can you excuse Dr. D.'s ignoring the issue?

As to the debates, McPherson, and Dr. D., I'd love to put the question to a jury of our peers. Your side would not pass the giggle test.

Sure, go ahead and try to persuade any literate person that the debates show Lincoln, or even Douglas, pressing an economic agenda, or even just trying to revive the bank.

Then try to sell folks a bridge in New York!

I think I'm done on that issue, and ready to be serious about really disputable matters.

There is, indeed, a case for the CSA. But it is not made by Dr. D.

Cheers,

Richard F.

[GOPcapitalist]

Here is what DiLorenzo says: "In virtually every one of the Lincoln Douglas debates, Lincoln made it a point to champion the nationalization of money and to demonize Jackson and the Democrats for their opposition to it." This is false.

As I have already conceded, it is an overstatement with an element truth behind it. It is not absolutely false as you assert, but simply overstated. In that case, it is a legitimate point to address, but not with a similarly illegitimate overstatement of your own or anothers - namely the assertion that "not a word" was said about anything related to the bank issue.

He does not declare, in a published book, the truth.

A single hyperbole does not discredit an entire book, especially when the majority of the overstatement was extended in an editorial external to the book.

And this is one of dozens of such cases.

I again ask, if that is so, why then do you not produce evidence of these "dozens of cases" you speak of?

After noting that your entire argument seems to revolve around a hypertechnical and downright petty overexamination of 4-5 disputes with the book's text, I asked you this same question earlier. I asked you to provide further examples. Your first attempt at doing so revealed you were grasping at straws.

Your additional examples quickly became significantly weaker than the already questionable presentations you have given on those 4-5 complaints around which you obsess. Many of them broke out of the realm of factual disputes and into DiLorenzo's disagreements with your own editorial beliefs. So if you know of these "dozens" of factual errors, you certainly aren't conveying their specifics very well. I will again give you a chance to do so, though I do not hold my hopes up very high.

Face it.

Why should I have to face a disputed assertion that you yourself have failed to demonstrate despite multiple invitations for you to do so?

[rdf]

I know this text well, and it tends not at all to the conclusion you wish to reach.

Try re-reading the first half of the Federalist, like a man, and not lke a lawyer with a guilty client.

And how about responding to my points, and not slithering away into other matters.

Cheers,

Richard F.

[rdf]

The last clause of Resolution 6. authorizing an exertion of the force of the whole agst. a delinquent State came next into consideration.

Ask yourself what this refers to.

Then look over the Federalist again.

Then have a nice big glass of Kentucky Bourbon, and try to love "Publius," and to reject Calhoun.

Bottoms up!

Cheers,

Richard F.