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Reflections on The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo
By John M. Lloyd
The “Cult of Lincoln” has been a hot topic for debate for the mid-19th Century American enthusiast and scholar. There is a seemingly demi-godlike stance that Abraham Lincoln casts upon the body of American heritage. Most of this aura of saintliness has been transferred to Lincoln’s persona postwar and as part of the mythmaking that happened after the generations that actually knew Lincoln as a person and a politician had died-off. A search for justness-of-cause by Northerners in the wake of the Union victory in the Civil War was the natural output of that victory. Lincoln’s name and reputation postwar underwent this transmogrification as he was the leader of the ‘great, just victory’ in the eyes of the whole world.
DiLorenzo’s book outlines the basic ideas of how the real Abraham Lincoln was further from the myth that has been told about him in American folklore. To DiLorenzo, despite Lincoln being a likeable person, he was a shrewd politician as well as a dishonest one at times, contrary to the moniker of “Honest Abe” doled out to him by his supporters of the period and afterward. Mere speculation, but perhaps this was anti-Lincoln sarcasm rather than a compliment.
DiLorenzo puts all aspects of the Lincoln myth to test. The first is that Lincoln was committed to racial equality from a very early point in his personal and political life. DiLorenzo provides ample evidence that this was not so, since on numerous occasions Lincoln upheld slavery’s legality, defended the rights of Southerners to own slaves, as well as once legally defended a Kentucky slave owner. The author says Lincoln had the same views of racial inferiority of blacks as most of his white contemporaries. An apologist for Lincoln might highlight that no politician in the mid-19th Century would get elected on the then-radical ideas of grounds of abolition and equality.
Second, the author asks the question why was manumission of slaves not the first recourse of the candidate Lincoln or the Lincoln Administration when given the potential chance to do so. The author says this is because of Lincoln’s political views in the Whig party’s consolidation of power at the federal level and tacit opposition of the spread of slavery. The “American System” of the Whig party eventually collapsed due to the rest of the country’s political thought rejecting such a drastic consolidation of power into the hands of the Federal government. Slavery was a political device that the Whigs, and later the National Republicans, used in order to motivate their voting bloc to vote for the party line. Lincoln was no different in this light.
The book also covers the “right” of secession. Basically, since the founding of the American Republic (of which the Declaration of Independence was really a secession from Great Britain), the Founding Fathers created the US Constitution with the stipulation that the sovereignty of the individual states that made-up the Union could leave it if they so democratically wished to do so since they were the ones that constituted it. While politically and historically I agree with these ideas, my only criticism of this chapter regarding this is that there was no “secession clause” in the Constitution itself, but there were verbal promises and other coordinating documents at the time that promised the States that they could leave the Union if they so desired. Lincoln merely played-upon this “loophole” in the political argument by the Southern states in order to use it against them to keep the Union together. I agree with the author’s conclusion in this regard.
More topics discussed include how Lincoln was able to somehow destroy the Constitution in order to save it, the legacy of centralization of government versus the true federal system the Founding Fathers envisioned and wrote into the Constitution and the “American System” envisioned by Henry Clay (as well as followed by Lincoln almost sycophantically). One could argue the US needed a stronger centralized federal system of government in order to bring-about a stronger Federal Union in the mid-19th Century and in later years the country as a whole benefitted from what was an abuse of the Constitution. The question becomes, does that make it right?
The author comes to the same conclusions I was taught while I was at college in the South. Lincoln was not honest at all, but a conniving politician that created his own laws in defiance of existing practices and beliefs. There was not much I did not agree with in this book.
By John M. Lloyd
The “Cult of Lincoln” has been a hot topic for debate for the mid-19th Century American enthusiast and scholar. There is a seemingly demi-godlike stance that Abraham Lincoln casts upon the body of American heritage. Most of this aura of saintliness has been transferred to Lincoln’s persona postwar and as part of the mythmaking that happened after the generations that actually knew Lincoln as a person and a politician had died-off. A search for justness-of-cause by Northerners in the wake of the Union victory in the Civil War was the natural output of that victory. Lincoln’s name and reputation postwar underwent this transmogrification as he was the leader of the ‘great, just victory’ in the eyes of the whole world.
DiLorenzo’s book outlines the basic ideas of how the real Abraham Lincoln was further from the myth that has been told about him in American folklore. To DiLorenzo, despite Lincoln being a likeable person, he was a shrewd politician as well as a dishonest one at times, contrary to the moniker of “Honest Abe” doled out to him by his supporters of the period and afterward. Mere speculation, but perhaps this was anti-Lincoln sarcasm rather than a compliment.
DiLorenzo puts all aspects of the Lincoln myth to test. The first is that Lincoln was committed to racial equality from a very early point in his personal and political life. DiLorenzo provides ample evidence that this was not so, since on numerous occasions Lincoln upheld slavery’s legality, defended the rights of Southerners to own slaves, as well as once legally defended a Kentucky slave owner. The author says Lincoln had the same views of racial inferiority of blacks as most of his white contemporaries. An apologist for Lincoln might highlight that no politician in the mid-19th Century would get elected on the then-radical ideas of grounds of abolition and equality.
Second, the author asks the question why was manumission of slaves not the first recourse of the candidate Lincoln or the Lincoln Administration when given the potential chance to do so. The author says this is because of Lincoln’s political views in the Whig party’s consolidation of power at the federal level and tacit opposition of the spread of slavery. The “American System” of the Whig party eventually collapsed due to the rest of the country’s political thought rejecting such a drastic consolidation of power into the hands of the Federal government. Slavery was a political device that the Whigs, and later the National Republicans, used in order to motivate their voting bloc to vote for the party line. Lincoln was no different in this light.
The book also covers the “right” of secession. Basically, since the founding of the American Republic (of which the Declaration of Independence was really a secession from Great Britain), the Founding Fathers created the US Constitution with the stipulation that the sovereignty of the individual states that made-up the Union could leave it if they so democratically wished to do so since they were the ones that constituted it. While politically and historically I agree with these ideas, my only criticism of this chapter regarding this is that there was no “secession clause” in the Constitution itself, but there were verbal promises and other coordinating documents at the time that promised the States that they could leave the Union if they so desired. Lincoln merely played-upon this “loophole” in the political argument by the Southern states in order to use it against them to keep the Union together. I agree with the author’s conclusion in this regard.
More topics discussed include how Lincoln was able to somehow destroy the Constitution in order to save it, the legacy of centralization of government versus the true federal system the Founding Fathers envisioned and wrote into the Constitution and the “American System” envisioned by Henry Clay (as well as followed by Lincoln almost sycophantically). One could argue the US needed a stronger centralized federal system of government in order to bring-about a stronger Federal Union in the mid-19th Century and in later years the country as a whole benefitted from what was an abuse of the Constitution. The question becomes, does that make it right?
The author comes to the same conclusions I was taught while I was at college in the South. Lincoln was not honest at all, but a conniving politician that created his own laws in defiance of existing practices and beliefs. There was not much I did not agree with in this book.
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