From Lew Rockwell.com:

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

From Judge Andrew Napolitano:

Abraham Lincoln was a Tyrant!

42,888 

   

Uploaded by TerroristPatriot on Jul 24, 2010

Daily News @ http://RevolutionNews.US ~ Judge Napolitano included a chapter entitled "Dishonest Abe" in his brilliant book, The Constitution in Exile. Judge Napolitano is a very busy man, hosting a radio show as well as appearing on television, making speeches all around the country, writing books, and practicing law -- in addition to (hopefully) having a private family life. Since I am a big fan of his writing I thought I would try to pique our readers' interest in what the judge has to say on this subject.

The first two sentences of the "Dishonest Abe" chapter of The Constitution in Exile are hard hitting: "The Abraham Lincoln of legend is an honest man who freed the slaves and saved the Union. Few things could be more misleading." He then goes on to say exactly what Ron Paul told the Washington Post, and which seemed to mystify and confuse Tim Russert in his "Meet the Press" interview with Congressman Paul: "In order to increase his federalist vision of centralized power, 'Honest' Abe misled the nation into an unnecessary war. He claimed that the war was about emancipating slaves, but he could have simply paid slave owners to free their slaves . . . . The bloodiest war in American history could have been avoided." And, as Ron Paul would likely add, all the other countries of the world that ended slavery in the nineteenth century, including Britain, Spain, France, Denmark, the Dutch, did so without a war. This, by the way, included the Northern states in the U.S. There were no "civil wars" to free the slaves in Massachusetts, New York (where slavery existed for over 200 years), or Illinois.

Lincoln's "actions were unconstitutional and he knew it," writes Napolitano, for "the rights of the states to secede from the Union . . . [are] clearly implicit in the Constitution, since it was the states that ratified the Constitution . . ." Lincoln's view "was a far departure from the approach of Thomas Jefferson, who recognized states' rights above those of the Union." Judge Napolitano also reminds his readers that the issue of using force to keep a state in the union was in fact debated -- and rejected -- at the Constitutional Convention as part of the "Virginia Plan."

Read the rest at:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo138.html


"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

— Thomas Jefferson


Time For A New American Revolution?

It started with the tyrant Lincoln - Opinion - ReviewJournal.com

It started with the tyrant Lincoln - Opinion - ReviewJournal.com

From Southern Nationalist Network:

Abraham Lincoln, the tyrant

April 23, 2011

By Michael

The following piece was written by Alan Bauman. It was actually two separate essay questions on a final exam he took for a course on the War for Southern Independence at the University of Memphis. Bauman writes:

I was so fed up with the yankee shills in the classroom, that I decided I would just write exactly what I was thinking about Lincoln and throw political correctness out the window. Surprisingly enough, I received an A for the exam and an A for the class. It is a rare day to find a professor who is kind to the South in history and politics courses, but [the] U[niversity] of M[emphis] has a couple of decent ones hiding among the vast throngs of liberals.

Here are the essays, presented together:

Emancipation Proclamation

Before the War Between the States began, Abraham Lincoln, stated that he had neither the intention nor the authority to interfere with the institution of slavery in the United States. During the war, however, this position seemingly changed when he issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This played a role in the outcome of the war, but the reasons why Lincoln did this are up for debate.

At Lincoln’s first inauguration, he laid the groundwork for the coming war with the Southern States. His primary goal, rather than the popular notion of freeing Southern slaves, was to collect federal tariffs by whatever means necessary in the South. While no longer having constitutional authority to do so, as the initial seven Southern states to secede were no longer parties to the compact, Lincoln is at least truthful about his reasons for invading the South. With regard to the issue of slavery, he very clearly states that he has no constitutional authority to interfere with it. Furthermore, following a history of statements in the past that he did not believe the negro to be equal to the white man, he asserted no personal intentions, constitutional or not, toward ending slavery. Far from being an abolitionist, Lincoln was actually more in line with the mercantilist views of the defunct Whig Party, whose goals largely consisted of advocating strong central government and internal improvements which we today call pork barrel projects.

As the war progressed into 1863, federal military power was proving to be no match for the agrarian Confederacy, in spite of the South’s lack of industrial and manpower resources. Lincoln’s opinions about slavery appear at face value to change towards the abolitionist stance, but they actually still adhere to his previous beliefs on saving the Union above all other goals. Lincoln realized that proclaiming slavery to be at an end and freeing slaves would benefit the Union military cause. His Emancipation Proclamation proclaims to free slaves all territories not held by federal troops, even going so far as to exempt cities, counties, and parishes in the South under federal occupation. While appearing to free quite a number of people, the proclamation did not free anyone from slavery, as they only “freed” slaves in Confederate territory. Whether one agrees that the Confederate States were sovereign or not, Lincoln had no actual power under the Constitution or even with military forces to free anyone in the areas he claimed to emancipate. With this being said, this provides an understanding of Lincoln’s actual goals with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Far from being a moral overtone for the war, Lincoln’s emancipation was simply a calculated political tool. Lincoln had been worried that foreign recognition of the Confederate States would remove any Northern justification for the war. In issuing a proclamation that slavery was ending, at least in some areas, he could appeal to foreign powers such as France and Great Britain, where slavery had already been abolished. Several countries in Europe and elsewhere were very close to supporting the Confederate States. A few countries, such as Great Britain, had granted the South belligerent rights, allowing them to sail the oceans without being declared pirates or renegades. Lincoln had already angered the British with the Trent Affair, very nearly bringing them to war on the side of the South against the United States, so he wanted to use every option available to discourage them from aiding the South militarily. In associating the South, and only those areas which the Southern government controlled with the institution of slavery, Lincoln was able to hang a bloody rag around the South’s neck. He was able to do all of this while also not freeing any slaves within the Union or areas that federal troops occupied, so as to keep the loyalty of slave owners in those areas.

The question of whether Lincoln could have and should have gone further with the Emancipation Proclamation is actually a moot point. Since Lincoln’s motives were political and not moral, Lincoln never even actually started down the road of abolishing slavery. He could not go further with something he never campaigned for in the first place. If Lincoln were truly serious about freeing slaves, his Emancipation Proclamation should have freed everyone within the United States and in federally occupied territory along with having congressional approval to do so. In fact, far from going further with anything in the war, including the proclamation, Lincoln never should have launched a war in the first place. Even if the entire North had held the opinion that the South left unconstitutionally, Lincoln had many chances to avoid war with the South and perhaps peacefully negotiate a return of the Southern States. The South repeatedly sent peace envoys to Washington, DC in order to bring about solutions to the differences between North and South. Lincoln refused all peace envoys before the war, not wanting to mistakenly give any recognition to the Confederacy by consenting to negotiations.

Lincoln was being honest when he first stated he didn’t care about slavery. He only cared about preventing the South from leaving the Union in order to continue funding internal projects in the North with Southern tariff money. Few people see his duplicity in issuing an Emancipation Proclamation that freed no one. His war left devastation and economic ruin across the South that lasted a century and left Southern blacks in poverty beside their former masters. Had Lincoln lived, they would have been shipped to foreign lands away from the country where they were home and whose language and religion they had adopted. Lincoln was no emancipator. 

Abraham Lincoln as President

Few presidents have gone down in history as having a great an impact on American society as Abraham Lincoln. He was the centerpiece of the bloodiest war in American history and the catalyst for the greatest fundamental shift in American politics since the revolution. By many, he is regarded as the greatest president the United States has had. But a closer look shows a very different man.

To understand Abraham Lincoln, one must first know that he was a lawyer. He knew how to use words to play two sides at once and produce his desired outcome. Secondly, one cannot accept his role in the newly formed Republican Party in the context of the party as it exists today. Nor can we view his political opponents with today’s party lines. Today’s Republican and Democratic Parties are nothing like their mid-19th century counterparts. Lincoln was the furthest thing from a conservative. Rather he was a revolutionary and a radical. When he took office, he claimed that in spite of the secession of the first seven Southern states, he would continue to collect federal tariffs in the South. After he committed an act of war by sending ships into Southern waters to resupply Fort Sumter, the South retaliated and the war began. He knew that the South firing on federal vessels would far overshadow his own unconstitutional actions. After the war began, he requested troops from the states still within the Union. Many governors such as John Letcher of Virginia and Claiborne Jackson of Missouri responded to Lincoln’s request by very sternly denouncing his illegal, revolutionary, and bellicose beliefs and stating clearly that they would not honor it. In the minds of many Americans, even in the North at the outbreak of the war, Lincoln’s raising of troops to march across his own country and invade the homes of neighbors was inconceivable. After personally initiating a state of war without congressional approval, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus illegally and had thousands of dissidents in the North arrested and jailed without trials during the war. Newspapers that disagreed with his actions were shut down. Even congressmen who disagreed with Lincoln’s wartime policies were not safe. Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio was arrested and exiled from the United States for his vocal opinions. When Lincoln needed more votes in the Congress for his policies, he unconstitutionally created the State of West Virginia out of Virginia without the state’s approval. His generals were handpicked to usher in an age of total war against the civilian populace of the South. He ousted popularly elected governments across the South in states such as Tennessee and installed military governors supported by federal troops, violating the Constitutional guarantee of republican governments across the states. With the list of unconstitutional and revolutionary actions taken by Abraham Lincoln, there is no other term to define the man other than radical. He did anything and everything that was expedient to his own political goals.

With secession from the Union, the Southern states saw themselves as preserving the government as established by the founding fathers while the North had been seen as growing tyrannical and overstepping its constitutional authority in the few decades leading up to the war. Lincoln and his Republican Party were in fact inciting a revolution to change the United States from a confederacy of sovereign republics into a single, vast democratic republic similar to what had led the French to ruin so many times. We can see the results of this transformation today with the authoritarian approach the federal government takes with the American people and the states. The founding fathers created the federal government as the agent and servant of the states, but it now stands as the master of the states. This is Lincoln’s revolutionary legacy in the landscape of American government. His views were that of the Federalists in the early days of America during and immediately after the Revolution. Federalists such as Alexander Hamilton wanted a strong central government that would set up protectionist schemes and tariffs along with guiding the central planning of the whole country. This was the prevailing model of government in Europe of that era. Anti-federalists, primarily from the South, believed in decentralized and limited government, low taxes, and a hands off approach to the economy. Lincoln was very much a part of the school of thought that the public treasury should be used to guide and shape the infrastructure and economy of the country. In order to do this, a strong central government ruling over weak provinces or states with no actual sovereignty, was necessary. Lincoln’s view on the Union was one of absolute authority at the top, with complete disregard for the decentralized tradition of American government and its founding documents.

Lincoln is often referred to as the “Great Emancipator.” The fact of the matter is, slavery was not officially ended in the United States until the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment after Lincoln’s death. In his first inaugural address in 1861, Lincoln declared that he had neither the personal intention, nor the constitutional authority to interfere with the institution of slavery. In spite of the initial thought that his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 freed slaves across America, the document is actually quite duplicitous. Lincoln goes so far as to proclaim that slavery every state within the Confederacy was ended while making very precise exceptions for federally occupied areas and states still within the Union. Thus no one was freed, accomplishing absolutely nothing in the way of abolition of slavery. Rather, the object of the Emancipation Proclamation was political and military in nature. Negroes were expected to run away from their Southern owners, weakening the economic capabilities of the South. Furthermore runaway slaves could then be pressed into service in the Union as laborers and as segregated negro troops. Politically, Lincoln wanted to attach the stigma of slavery on the Confederacy to prevent foreign governments from recognizing the new nation. His duplicity paid off and the South received no direct aid from any foreign government, in spite of not having had to free anyone. In reality, Lincoln’s views on slavery as being a political tool rather than a moral object followed from his own recorded personal prejudices. His opinions with regard to slaves and free negroes in his era were that they were unequal with the white race and could never be trusted to live side by side, intermarry with whites, or hold political office. In fact, had Lincoln not been assassinated, he had planned to recolonize Africa with newly freed American slaves in order to keep them from competing and integrating into American society.

Had Lincoln simply let the South go, the fledgling Confederacy of seven states may never have grown to the eleven officially accepted states or the thirteen disputed states that it became. It is even possible that had the South been left alone, they eventually may have peacefully returned to the Union at a later time when passions that had led to secession subsided. As it stands, Lincoln is responsible for the deaths of over six hundred thousand American lives in an unnecessary war of conquest. In waging a war against brothers seeking independence and self-rule, he made a mockery of the Declaration of Independence by acting exactly as the British Empire had during the American Revolution. Lincoln turned the American political system upside down, placing the federal government over the sovereign states rather than honoring the role of the federal government as agent and arbitrator between the states. Lincoln’s legacy is one that has led to the nearly irreparable condition in which America now finds itself, with endless foreign wars and heading towards the cliff of complete bankruptcy. Abraham Lincoln was a duplicitous political criminal and a tyrant in every sense of the word.

Tags: abraham lincoln, civil war, confederacy, emancipation proclamation, slavery, southern states secession, tyrant, union, us president

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