DiLorenzo's Distorted Mask on Lincoln

LINCOLN UNMASKED: WHAT YOU’RE NOT
SUPPOSED TO KNOW ABOUT DISHONEST ABE
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo (New York: Crown Forum, 2006)

            A book should stand on its own; this one is unbalanced, distorted, and a disappointment.  DiLorenzo does present a strong case that the founders of this nation conceived of it as another confederation of sovereign states, with each capable of seceding should the need arise.  In support of this view, he cites Jefferson and Madison, the supporters of New England’s Resolutions during the War of 1812, the Nullification crisis in South Carolina over the “Tariff of Abominations,” and even the refusal of some Northern states to abide by the Fugitive Slave Act.  In short, DiLorenzo has written a legal brief for the right of secession, and he refers to the military conflict, not as the Civil War, but as “the War between the States.”  Although mentioning Pres. James Buchanan only regarding the tariff, in reality Di Lorenzo has provided a defense of Buchanan’s late policy of allowing the Union to dissolve.

            However, there is more to the story.  When small-government advocate, Jefferson, as president, purchased the Louisiana Territory from France, where was the Constitutional justification for such an act – one that nearly doubled the size of the nation and promised to respect the rights of the Catholic population?  And while Democratic Vice President Calhoun was championing states rights and nullification in the 1830s, Democratic President Jackson was just as determined to squelch it.  (There was an equestrian statue to honor the “hero of New Orleans” in what became known as Jackson Square in that city.  During the Civil War, once the largest city of the Confederacy had been captured by the Union, General “Beast” Butler added an inscription to the base of the statue.  Added were some of Jackson’s words, “Our Union: it must be preserved.”)

            While many Americans, abolitionists and slavocrats, may have believed that any state could simply secede from the Union, I think it clear that many more Americans, including Democrats like Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and Stephen Douglas, opposed that view.  So did the Republican Party.  The majority of Republicans supported Lincoln in his determination to retain Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston in 1861, even if rebels fired upon it.  Northerners agreed enough with Lincoln to answer his call for troops against the rebellion.

            DiLorenzo rightly exposes Lincoln’s views on race – he favored Black emigration to Africa, to Haiti, to Central America.  He did not believe Blacks and whites could live together in equality.  By today’s politically correct standards, Lincoln was a racist.  (Of course, by those standards, who isn’t?)  Like many Northerners, he may have opposed slavery because he did not want Blacks living in the free states.

            But did Lincoln change any of his views over time?  Could he have held two seemingly contradictory views at the same time?  While in 1861 Lincoln was willing to guarantee the continuance of slavery in the states where it already existed, by 1863, by his Military Order, he was abolishing slavery in areas already in rebellion.  Moreover, in recruiting Blacks, including run-away slaves into the Union Army, Lincoln was smothering the possibility of the continuance of slavery.  And though Lincoln continued to push for colonization of Blacks, in his last speech Lincoln spoke of allowing some Blacks to vote.

            While DiLorenzo dismisses slavery as a cause of the Civil War, it is interesting that when the Confederacy was facing loss of recruits, some proposed recruiting Blacks into the Confederate army.  The proposal was rejected, for the regime knew that armed Blacks, even in a Confederate army would spell the end of slavery.  The Confederate leadership preferred military defeat to using Black troops.  Lincoln used Black troops, won the war, preserved the Union, and slavery was abolished.

            DiLorenzo contends that the war was not about slavery, and instead mentions other issues like the high Morrill Tariff.  Yet, that tariff was passed by Congress and signed by outgoing President Buchanan before Lincoln was inaugurated.  I think the war was about what Lincoln said it was about – a war to preserve the union.

            To do so Lincoln had to use extraordinary measures.  Maryland and Virginia surrounded the Union capital, Washington, D.C.  Union troops were pelted in Baltimore as they marched to defend the capital.  Lincoln responded with harsh measures to keep Maryland, and other areas, in the Union – arresting legislators, destroying opposition newspapers and arresting their editors, deporting Ohio Representative Vallandigham, suspending the right of habeas corpus, issuing an arrest warrant for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court.  DiLorenzo complains that Lincoln violated the Constitution by allowing West Virginia to secede from Virginia.  Perhaps, Lincoln should be criticized for not promoting a new state of east Tennessee and western North Carolina.  He was using measures to win a war and crush a rebellion.

            DiLorenzo repeatedly indicts Lincoln on numerous charges, including voter manipulation.  Yet, despite limits on free speech and the destruction of the free press in many areas of the North, Democrats made gains in the off-year elections of 1862.  And even after dumping his vice president from Maine and getting Tennessee Democrat Andrew Johnson as his running mate in 1864 on the Union Party ticket, Lincoln anticipated electoral defeat.  Yet, when the votes were counted, Lincoln defeated the peace candidate, Democrat Gen. McClellan, not only in the civilian vote, but in the soldier vote as well.  Does DiLorenzo believe that the election was so rigged that the peace candidate had actually defeated Lincoln?

            In the end, DiLorenzo’s book is a brief for one side which so distorts the history of the era and the actions of Lincoln and the Union that the book cannot stand alone.  It is unbalanced.