See my Post #235 above.
Always keeping in mind, of course, that this all started because DiLorenzo said that Lincoln "championed" the "corrupt Whig economic agenda" in "virtually every one of the Lincoln Douglas debates." This, I think we all agree is an entirely different and totally unsupported claim.
You are quite correct.
"Always keeping in mind, of course, that this all started because DiLorenzo said that Lincoln "championed" the "corrupt Whig economic agenda" in "virtually every one of the Lincoln Douglas debates." This, I think we all agree is an entirely different and totally unsupported claim."
And you replied,
You are quite correct.
Thank you. I think anyone who takes the time to read the debates would agree with you.
May I draw back a bit, and draw attention to the main thesis of the first part of DiLorenzo's book? It is, so far as one can make it out, that Lincoln's political aims were an economic agenda and a politically centralizing agenda, and that he really had little interest in the injustice of slavery, or in the polices that might finally end it. Since the general opinion of citizens and scholars alike is that slavery was paramount in the events bringing Lincoln to the White House, DiLorenzo must debunk that view first.
It was for that reason DiLorenzo brought in the mention of the Bank, characterizing it as he did, and claiming that Lincoln "made it a point" to bring up, not just the word "Bank" but an economic agenda.
Now, in point of fact, the bank issue is subordinated entirely, by both Lincoln and Douglas, to the question of the authority of Supreme Court decisions and precedents, in order to score points on the current Court issue, namely Dred Scott. But that is, materially, a slavery issue.
Thus, DiLorenzo's "evidence," with reference to his thesis, comes to exactly nothing. To borrow from Lincoln, he finds the words, "horse chestnut" and mistakes them to mean a chestnut horse.
Thanks again for you reply,
Richard F