{"product_id":"lincoln-unmaskedisbn-9780307338426","title":"Lincoln Unmasked","description":"What if you were told that the revered leader Abraham Lincoln was actually a political tyrant who stifled his opponents by suppressing their civil rights? What if you learned that the man so affectionately referred to as the “Great Emancipator” supported white supremacy and pledged not to interfere with slavery in the South? Would you suddenly start to question everything you thought you knew about Lincoln and his presidency?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eYou should.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThomas J. DiLorenzo, who ignited a fierce debate about Lincoln’s legacy with his book \u003ci\u003eThe Real Lincoln\u003c\/i\u003e, now presents a litany of stunning new revelations that explode the most enduring (and pernicious) myths about our sixteenth president. Marshaling an astonishing amount of new evidence, \u003ci\u003eLincoln Unmasked\u003c\/i\u003e offers an alarming portrait of a political manipulator and opportunist who bears little resemblance to the heroic, stoic, and principled figure of mainstream history. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDid you know that Lincoln . . .\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• did NOT save the union? In fact, Lincoln did more than any other individual to destroy the voluntary union the Founding Fathers recognized.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• did NOT want to free the slaves? Lincoln, who did not believe in equality of the races, wanted the Constitution to make slavery “irrevocable.” \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• was NOT a champion of the Constitution? Contrary to his high-minded rhetoric, Lincoln repeatedly trampled on the Constitution—and even issued an arrest warrant for the chief justice of the United States! \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• was NOT a great statesman? Lincoln was actually a warmonger who manipulated his own people into a civil war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e• did NOT utter many of his most admired quotations? DiLorenzo exposes a legion of statements that have been falsely attributed to Lincoln for generations—usually to enhance his image. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn addition to detailing Lincoln’s offenses against the principles of freedom, equality, and states’ rights, Lincoln Unmasked exposes the vast network of academics, historians, politicians, and other “gatekeepers” who have sanitized his true beliefs and willfully distorted his legacy. DiLorenzo reveals how the deification of Lincoln reflects a not-so-hidden agenda to expand the size and scope of the American state far beyond what the Founding Fathers envisioned—an expansion that Lincoln himself began.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe hagiographers have shaped Lincoln’s image to the point that it has become more fiction than fact. With \u003ci\u003eLincoln Unmasked\u003c\/i\u003e, DiLorenzo shows us an Abraham Lincoln without the rhetoric, lies, and political bias that have clouded a disastrous president’s enduring damage to the nation.“\u003ci\u003eLincoln Unmasked\u003c\/i\u003e is a masterpiece response to the crowd that DiLorenzo calls the Lincoln cult. He names names, and names places, in what is a fascinating read and correction to one of the most important episodes in U.S. history.” —Walter E. Williams, nationally syndicated columnist and John M. Olin Professor of Economics at George Mason University \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Abe, climb down from Mt. Rushmore, and vacate the penny. Your days in the pantheon are over, thanks to the scholarship and courage of Thomas J. DiLorenzo.” —Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In \u003ci\u003eThe Real Lincoln\u003c\/i\u003e, Professor DiLorenzo convincingly exposed Lincoln idolatry as a fraud that has poisoned America’s understanding of itself. Following up in \u003ci\u003eLincoln Unmasked\u003c\/i\u003e, he shows who maintains and profits from the toxin in the body politic and the damage that they are doing to us to this very day. DiLorenzo’s masterful diagnosis, we may hope, will go a long way toward a cure.” —Clyde Wilson, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History, University of South Carolina\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eLincoln Unmasked\u003c\/i\u003e is a masterful book. Finally, Lincoln has been held to account and the lies and machinations of the Lincoln cult exposed.” —Paul Craig Roberts, syndicated columnist and former Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Treasury\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Brilliant and withering, \u003ci\u003eLincoln Unmasked\u003c\/i\u003e answers the kind of forbidden questions that our country now more than ever needs to hear. Thomas DiLorenzo deals in the kind of information that is consistently withheld from students in what we laughingly call our educational system.” —Thomas E. Woods, Jr., bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eThe Politically Incorrect Guide to American History\u003c\/i\u003eThomas J. DiLorenzo is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Real Lincoln \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eHow Capitalism Saved America\u003c\/i\u003e. A professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and a senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, he has written for the \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eUSA Today\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eWashington Post\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eReader’s Digest\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBarron’s\u003c\/i\u003e, and many other publications. He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.1\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eChallenging the Gatekeepers\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen 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: “He’s  anti-Lincoln!” Professor Bradford, an expert in the use of rhetoric, had  dared to criticize some of Lincoln’s deceptive political language in  peer-reviewed academic journal articles.1 Professor Bradford’s opponents  apparently considered this blasphemous and conducted a vicious political  campaign against him. They stooped so low as to spread false rumors that  he was a Hitler admirer.2 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThings 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 can’t his record speak for itself?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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.3\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAccording to Webster’s 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.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Lincoln cult is interested not so much in research and education about  Lincoln and the war—about discovering historical truth—but 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; that’s 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?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMany 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.4) 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRight-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  Lincoln’s legacy.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThus, 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut 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. Jeffrey Hummel’s Emancipating  Slaves, Enslaving Free Men is another hard-hitting and influential  challenge to the Lincoln cult, as is John Remington Graham’s A  Constitutional History of Secession. Professor Clyde Wilson’s book From  Union to Empire contains dozens of brilliant essays that challenge many of  the superstitions and half-truths that are the intellectual currency of  the Lincoln cult. The 1930s-era classic Lincoln the Man, by Edgar Lee  Masters, Clarence Darrow’s law partner, was recently republished by the  Foundation for American Education. (It was the most critical account of  Lincoln to be published in the first half of the twentieth century.) The  South Was Right! by James and Walter Kennedy has sold more than 100,000  copies, according to the authors. Secession, State, and Liberty, edited by  David Gordon and published by Transaction Publishers, contains essays by  twelve scholars who all write favorably of the right of secession in a  free society; most of them excoriate Lincoln for waging the bloodiest war  in history just to deny that such a right existed. And Thomas Woods’s New  York Times bestseller, The Politically Incorrect Guide to American  History, cites many of the preceding authors to arrive at conclusions such  as, “States had the right to secede” in 1861; “The War between the States was not launched to free the slaves”; and “Lincoln  believed that whites were superior and favored the deportation of freed  slaves.”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePerhaps even more important is the Internet, which allows scholars to  present ideas to the entire world without having to be filtered by  gatekeepers of any kind.5\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLincoln Unmasked is another book that will make the gatekeepers very  unhappy, for it uncovers important details about America’s sixteenth  president that the Lincoln cult has effectively swept under the rug—until  now. The book grew out of my continued interest in the Lincoln legacy  after the publication of The Real Lincoln. In the years since I wrote that  book I have continued to research the issue and discovered entirely new  subjects and perspectives on Lincoln, which are presented here for the  first time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe book is divided into three sections: “What You’re Not Supposed to Know  About Lincoln and His War”; “Economic   Issues You’re Supposed to Ignore”; and “The Politics of the Lincoln Cult.” The first section, Chapters 2 through 10, explores a number  of historically important issues that most Americans seem totally unaware  of, thanks to the efforts of the gatekeepers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 2 runs through “the Lincoln myths”—the most fundamental misconceptions about our sixteenth president.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 3 reveals that a host of familiar “Lincoln quotes” are, in fact,  fake—Lincoln never said them. Academic researchers have exposed the truth  that the Lincoln cult wants to obscure. The point is, not only have whole  sections of Lincoln’s record been expunged from history, but other  sections have been fabricated.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapters 4 and 5 expose how historians have rewritten antebellum history  to portray—falsely—the North as benevolent and benighted, and to demonize  the South. In war, the victors get to rewrite the history. Scholars are  finally correcting the record. Drawing partly on the work of Brown University historian Joanne Pope Melish, Chapter 4 details how slavery  existed in the North for some two hundred years, finally ending in the  late 1850s. Thus, nineteenth-century “Yankees” were never quite as morally  superior as they made themselves out to be. And as Chapter 5 reveals,  Lincoln himself, for his entire adult life, advocated the deportation (his  own word) of blacks to Africa, Haiti, Central and South America, and  elsewhere. In fact, he held a White House meeting to encourage a group of  free black men to “lead by example” and leave the country, moving to  Liberia.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere was much more Northern opposition to Lincoln and his war than most  Americans know of. Chapter 6 discusses the fiery attacks on Lincoln and  his administration by the famous Massachusetts abolitionist Lysander  Spooner. Spooner, among the most prominent and active of all the New  England abolitionists, believed that the North fought the war to  consolidate political power for the benefit of Northern industrialists. He  believed—even years after the war—that the issue of slavery was cynically  used as a mere political smoke screen.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGenerations of Americans have been miseducated about “states’ rights,” and  federalism as well, by being told the false tale that the states’ rights  doctrine was only an excuse for slavery. The truth, as Chapter 7 shows, is  that Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were among the foremost proponents  of states’ rights, and for reasons that had nothing to do with slavery.  Moreover, the states’ rights doctrine was embraced by the citizens of all  states, north and south, until 1865. Indeed, some northern states invoked  the doctrine to “nullify” the federal government’s Fugitive Slave Act in  the years prior to the war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 8 uncovers one of the most important negative consequences of the  war: the death of states’ rights and, particularly, of the founding  fathers’ notion of “divided sovereignty.” This idea, which is often  associated with James Madison, was that the federal government could not  be trusted to be the   arbiter of what limits would be placed on its own powers. The citizens of  the free and independent states, as sovereigns, were to have that role  under the original Constitution. This ended in 1865, after which the  federal government, through the Supreme Court, would decide what limits  would be placed on its own powers. Not surprisingly, it has decided that  there are, in essence, no limits at all, just as the founders warned.  Throughout the twentieth century all the worst tyrants in the world would  attack the idea of states’ rights and divided sovereignty and champion the  cause of consolidated or centralized government.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 9 explains how Lincoln drove this transformation in American  government by asserting the ahistorical argument that the citizens of the  states were never sovereign, and that the Constitution was somehow adopted  by “the whole people” of the nation. In reality, “the whole people” had  nothing at all to do with the adoption of the Constitution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eChapter 10 tells the story of how, when confronted with an opinion by the  chief justice of the United States, Roger B. Taney—that Lincoln’s  suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was illegal—the president issued  an arrest warrant for the judge. The Lincoln cult has disputed the  accuracy of this story in the past, but this chapter presents several new,  unimpeachable sources that prove it to be true. Lincoln essentially  destroyed the separation of powers during his administration by  intimidating federal judges—and not just Taney—in this way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf there is anything that causes the Lincoln cult to become agitated, if  not hysterical, it is the suggestion that Abraham   Lincoln, like virtually all other politicians in world history, was  acutely interested in the accumulation of money and power. The fact is, he was, as Part II of the book demonstrates. For most of his adult life, before jumping to the Republicans,  Lincoln was a member of the Whig Party—the party of the moneyed elite in America. He was a wealthy trial lawyer who married into an affluent,  slave-owning Kentucky family, the Todds. As a prominent railroad industry  attorney he was a consummate political insider in Northern big business  circles.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Lincoln cult has effectively covered up the truth about Lincoln’s and  the Republican Party’s economic policies. Chapter 11 shows how Lincoln’s  Republican Party used the powers of the central government to benefit its  corporate supporters, usually at the expense of the general public.  Lincoln himself was what today would be called a “lobbyist” for the  railroad industry, as discussed in Chapter 12. He was also an ardent  protectionist who spent his entire political career promoting  protectionist tariffs, as shown in Chapter 13, and an “inflationist” who  favored letting a federal bank print paper money that was not necessarily  redeemable in gold or silver, as demonstrated in Chapter 14. Both the Whig  and Republican parties used tariffs and paper money to subsidize corporations engaged in “internal improvements” projects.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePart III—“The Politics of the Lincoln Cult”—describes how the cult uses  the Lincoln legacy to promote imperialistic, if not totalitarian, policies  in today’s world. Advocates of an American empire that would wage  “perpetual war for perpetual peace,” to borrow a phrase from Gore Vidal, hope to use the Lincoln legend to encourage America’s youth to participate  in such adventures, as discussed in Chapter 15. Chapter 16 reveals how  today’s enemies of civil liberties take as their model Lincoln’s  suspension of civil liberties in the North for the duration of his  administration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven the Pledge of Allegiance is something that has much less to do with expressing love for one’s country than more or less blind obedience to the  consolidated, centralized state that was created in the aftermath of the  War between the States. Most Americans will be surprised to learn in  Chapter 17 that the Pledge was authored in 1892 by an avowed socialist named Francis  Bellamy who wanted to use it to indoctrinate schoolchildren into the ideology of big government. The founding fathers would have been appalled  by such a thing and would likely have rebelled against it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Lincoln cult has even used Lincoln’s record of imprisoning some of the  congressional opposition, such as Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of  Ohio, who was deported in 1863, as evidence that such a practice might  well be acceptable today. This sordid story is told in Chapter 18.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe nineteenth and final chapter begins with a survey of some recent books  by prominent authors who have seriously challenged the Official View of  American History that is presented by the Lincoln cult. Among these  authors are New York Times editorial writer Steven R. Weisman, University  of Virginia historian Michael F. Holt, liberal writer Michael Lind, and former U.S. Navy Secretary and novelist James Webb.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAre the gatekeepers losing their influence at last? 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