Thomas DiLorenzo - Lincoln Unmasked: What Youre Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe

Copyright 2006 by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press,
an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,
a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 2006.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

DiLorenzo, Thomas J.
Lincoln unmasked : what youre not supposed to know about dishonest Abe /
Thomas J. DiLorenzo.1st ed.
1. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865. 2. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865Ethics.
3. Lincoln, Abraham, 18091865Public opinion. 4. United StatesPolitics and government18611865. 5. Public opinionUnited States.
6. PresidentsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title.
E457 .2.D45 2006
973.7092dc22 2006012739

eISBN: 978-0-307-49652-2

v3.1

Dedicated to the memory of
Professor Mel Bradford,
a gentleman of great learning
and intellectual courage.

Challenging the Gatekeepers

W hen President Reagan nominated Professor Mel Bradford of the University of Dallas to head the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1981, a group of intellectuals with influence in the administration waged a fierce campaign against the nomination. Their chief complaint was: Hes anti-Lincoln! Professor Bradford, an expert in the use of rhetoric, had dared to criticize some of Lincolns deceptive political language in peer-reviewed academic journal articles. Professor Bradford (who passed away in 1993) eventually withdrew his name in disgust. His opponents prevailed; there would be no challenge to the popular view of Abraham Lincoln.

Things have not changed much in the academic world since the Bradford affair. I have been subjected to similar calumny and name-calling, as has anyone else who attempts to deviate from the Official Truth. Lincoln has been portrayed as a saint, and his defenders are so sanctimonious that they consider themselves to be self-appointed Gatekeepers of the Truth. They do whatever is necessary to keep unflattering information about Lincoln from the public. If they do dare to mention such facts, they spin their statements to mislead, misinform, and confuse the reader. One has to wonder: What purpose does all this deception and misinformation serve? If Lincoln was such a saint, why cant his record speak for itself?

The gatekeepers constitute what I call the Lincoln cult. It is mostly composed of academics who have spent their careers carrying on the deification of Abraham Lincoln that began with the New England clergy (and the Republican Party) of the late nineteenth century. As a rule, they ignore unpleasant facts about Lincoln, such as his suspension of habeas corpus, his imprisonment of tens of thousands of Northern political opponents during the War between the States, his shutting down of hundreds of opposition newspapers, his micromanagement of the bombing of Southern cities and the waging of war on civilians, his pledge to support a constitutional amendment prohibiting the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery, and his lifelong white supremacist views. If they do mention such things at all, it is only to make voluminous excuses for them or to denounce others who address them in their writing.

According to Websters College Dictionary, a cult is a group that devotes itself to or venerates a person, ideal, fad, etc. or a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist.

The Lincoln cult is interested not so much in research and education about Lincoln and the warabout discovering historical truthbut in maintaining a largely false image of the man whom they call Father Abraham and compare to Jesus and Moses. The rest of the academic world engages in vigorous debate and discussion of myriad issues every day; thats what academic freedom is supposed to be all about. But when it comes to the subject of Lincoln, no such debate is permitted by the gatekeepers. There have been heated debates over the legacies of all other presidents, be it Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Reagan, or Clinton, but no such debate is acceptable regarding Lincoln. One has to wonder: What are the gatekeepers afraid of?

The so-called Lincoln scholars decidedly nonscholarly behavior is motivated primarily by academic self-interest. The academic gatekeepers are paid very well in their academic jobs, and through government and foundation grants as well. They do very well financially on the lecture circuit and use university and foundation funds to give each other Lincoln Awards for their scholarship that are sometimes worth tens of thousands of dollars. Any challenges to their views are seen not only as challenges to the Official View of American History, but also to their overblown professional reputations and bank accounts.

Many Lincoln cultists behave in the manner they do because it serves a political agenda as well as a personal one. Left-wing Lincoln cultists run the gamut from mainstream liberals to democratic socialists to hard-core leftists like Eric Foner of Columbia University, who lamented the demise of the Soviet Union. (In a 1991 article in The Nation magazine Foner opined that, unlike Mikhail Gorbachev, Lincoln would not have allowed the former Soviet republics to secede peacefully from the Soviet Union.) They are nationalists, like Lincoln, in that they favor a more powerful and more highly centralized (i.e., monopolistic) form of government that can better expand the welfare state, regulate the economy, or adopt socialism.

Right-wing Lincoln cultists such as Harry Jaffa and many of his fellow Straussians (followers of the late Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago) are also nationalists, like Lincoln, because they believe that a more powerful and highly centralized government will serve their political agenda of a more aggressive and imperialistic foreign policy. Indeed, in my 2002 debate with Jaffa, sponsored by the Independent Institute of Oakland, California, he declared at one point that 9/11 proved more than ever that we need a strong central government. It was not just a coincidence that he made this declaration in the context of a debate over Lincolns legacy.

Thus, one thing that all Lincoln cultists have in common is that they use the Lincoln mythology to advocate a bigger, more centralized, and more interventionist central government for one reason or another.

But the Lincoln gate is beginning to rust, which is apparently causing panic among the gatekeepers, who are not at all used to having their ideas challenged. In recent years Charles Adams published When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession and it sold very well, as did my own book, The Real Lincoln