A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary WarMost Americans consider Abraham Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the Great Emancipator has grown to mythic proportions as hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington, D.C., extol his heroism and martyrdom. But what if most everything you knew about Lincoln were false? … Lincoln were false? What if, instead of an American hero who sought to free the slaves, Lincoln were in fact a calculating politician who waged the bloodiest war in american history in order to build an empire that rivaled Great Britain’s?
In The Real Lincoln, author Thomas J. DiLorenzo uncovers a side of Lincoln not told in many history books–and overshadowed by the immense Lincoln legend. Through extensive research and meticulous documentation, DiLorenzo portrays the sixteenth president as a man who devoted his political career to revolutionizing the American form of government from one that was very limited in scope and highly decentralized—as the Founding Fathers intended—to a highly centralized, activist state. Standing in his way, however, was the South, with its independent states, its resistance to the national government, and its reliance on unfettered free trade. To accomplish his goals, Lincoln subverted the Constitution, trampled states’ rights, and launched a devastating Civil War, whose wounds haunt us still. According to this provacative book, 600,000 American soldiers did not die for the honorable cause of ending slavery but for the dubious agenda of sacrificing the independence of the states to the supremacy of the federal government, which has been tightening its vise grip on our republic to this very day.
In The Real Lincoln, you will discover a side of Lincoln that you were probably never taught in school—a side that calls into question the very myths that surround him and helps explain the true origins of a bloody, and perhaps, unnecessary war.
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Everyone should read “The Real Lincoln” to know the real facts about why many of the southern states seceded from the Union, and it wasn’t about slavery. Lincoln was a scoundrel to say the least. Didn’t care about the Constitution.
One will definitely come away with a different viewpoint of our 17th President after reading this book. I take any new “read” with a grain of salt, but the author is meticulous about his research, and his conclusions are too close to reality for comfort. Perhaps Lincoln isn’t the saint history has painted him to be…..
This really drives home the fact that history is written by the victors.
Found it to be extremely informative, brought back family stories of the 1864 election where army supervised voting and destroyed ballots if not for Lincoln.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo has advanced the argument made by Charles Adams and has convincingly argued that Lincoln’s war was mostly about taxes and power and had very little to do with slavery. The picture of the man is not a flattering one. Lincoln comes across as a white supremacist who made it very clear that he did not think very highly of blacks and did not think them fit to live among civilized white society. Support for this view comes not only from his speeches but also from his actions. While many of his admirers point to the Emancipation Proclamation, DiLorenzo points out that Lincoln never freed a single slave in Union territory when he issued that document and was unable to free any slave in the Confederacy where he had no power to demand anything.
The man was a tyrant and a slayer of liberty. That is why great libertarians like Lysander Spooner and Lord Acton opposed his actions and warned about the danger that Lincoln presented to individual freedom. DiLorenzo writes about Lincoln’s oppression of the press and his attacks on anyone who questioned his unconstitutional actions.
Like Adams, DiLorenzo shows that the high tariff pushed by the Northern industrialists harmed the Southern economy and how the desire to keep collecting that revenue was the main driver for Lincoln’s invasion of the South even as the desire to escape the tariff was the main driver behind the secession movement. This is a critical book for anyone who wishes to understand American history and wants access to scholarship that is supported by ample support in the form of references to the original material that the Lincoln apologists have ignored.
This book is a serious attempt at reconsidering the life and career of Abraham Lincoln. The bulk of the book focuses on his dealings with the Civil War. He challenges conventional wisdom and offers a historically accurate challenge to the conventional view of Lincoln. The President has practically been deified by US academia and media. However, Lincoln’s record of suspending civil liberties, the mass arrest of those whom he disagreed with, how he was unable to avoid civil war when the rest of the major countries handily navigated this without the death of thousands, etc. are all worthy of careful evaluation and the author does so thoroughly. My only criticism of the book is the author’s “hit man” style. It is evident he has an agenda, therefore he only garners support from those who already agree with him, which are very few. I think he would have had more influence with a more balanced approach. Still, people should not consider themselves serious about US history unless they read this and other books that openly (and seriously) examine the total record of Lincoln.
This is a terrible book. First the author conflates slavery with racism. It would be true to say that before he became president, Lincoln did not believe in racial equality. It is not true to say that just because he did not believe in equality, Lincoln did not hate the institution of slavery. The war was fought to end slavery. We all might wish that the end of slavery had brought racial equality. But to say Lincoln did not care about slavery is simply wrong. In his unsuccessful attempt to suggest that Lincoln could have avoided the Civil War, the author ignores the fact that the South seceded and that the South fired the first shots of the Civil War. In suggesting that Lincoln was simply trying to aggrandize the federal government and that Lincoln was a power-hungry tyrant, the author completely ignores Jefferson Davis and everything the Confederate government was doing. Sure Lincoln could have avoided the Civil War if he had just done what Buchanan had done and let the South secede. Finally, trying to drag Jackson into the fray as someone standing up for the right to secede utterly ignores the Nullification Crisis. This book is just right-wing….balderdash.
Did not like it