Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe - By Thomas DiLorenzo

November 21, 2011

Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe is a 2006 follow-up biography to The Real Lincoln written by Thomas DiLorenzo that is highly critical of the Presidency of Abraham Lincoln.

DiLorenzo directs criticism at Lincoln in this new look at the famed president. Within the book he argues that states within the union had the right at the time of the American Civil War to secede and that the more centralized government that emerged after the war was incompatible with democracy. Another focus of the book is DiLorenzo's claim that most scholars of the Civil War are biased in their approach to the history because, in DiLorenzo's own words, "in war the victors get to write the history". Dilorenzo also points out that Lincoln was opposed to racial equality and that many abolitionists, including Lysander Spooner, bitterly hated him.

Criticisms

Some critics conclude that while there is room for discrepancy, the overall interpretation of President Lincoln has sided towards truth. One case of this is Justin Ewers, a senior editor at U.S. News & World Report and writing for The Washington Post, who says of the book: "Of course, Lincoln's presidency had its dark side. Most infamously, the Great Emancipator suspended habeas corpus in 1861-62, allowing the indefinite detention of citizens without trial. Still, DiLorenzo's work is more of a diatribe against a mostly unnamed group of Lincoln scholars than a real historical analysis."

Other reviewers, like Publishers Weekly, while calling the book a "laughable screed," suggest that DiLorenzo's main target are "scholars who dominate American universities (most notably Eric Foner)"

A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War is a biography of Abraham Lincoln written by Thomas DiLorenzo in 2002. The biography differs from traditional books about Lincoln in presenting a severely critical view of his presidency.

In discussing Lincoln's legacy, DiLorenzo describes civil liberties abuses such as the suspension of habeas corpus, violations of the First Amendment, war crimes committed by generals in the American Civil War, and the expansion of government power. DiLorenzo argues that Lincoln's views on race exhibited forms of bigotry that are commonly overlooked today (See Abraham Lincoln on slavery). DiLorenzo also argues that Lincoln instigated the American Civil War not over slavery but rather to centralize power and to enforce the strongly protectionist Morrill Tariff; similarly, he criticizes Lincoln for his strong support of Henry Clay's American System.

According to Walter E. Williams, a syndicated columnist and professor of economics at George Mason University:

As DiLorenzo documents – contrary to conventional wisdom, books about Lincoln, and the lessons taught in schools and colleges – the War between the States was not fought to end slavery; Even if it were, a natural question arises: Why was a costly war fought to end it? African slavery existed in many parts of the Western world, but it did not take warfare to end it. Dozens of countries, including the territorial possessions of the British, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Countries such as Venezuela and Colombia experienced conflict because slave emancipation was simply a ruse for revolutionaries who were seeking state power and were not motivated by emancipation per se.

Abraham Lincoln’s direct statements indicated his support for slavery; He defended slave owners’ right to own their property, saying that "when they remind us of their constitutional rights [to own slaves], I acknowledge them, not grudgingly but fully and fairly; and I would give them any legislation for the claiming of their fugitives" (in indicating support for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850).

Criticisms

Ken Masugi of the Claremont Institute in National Review contends that "DiLorenzo frequently distorts the meaning of the primary sources he cites, Lincoln most of all." Masugi provides the following example:

Consider this inflammatory assertion: "Eliminating every last black person from American soil, Lincoln proclaimed, would be 'a glorious consummation.'" Compare the nuances and qualifications in what Lincoln actually said: "If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means, succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery; and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost father-land, with bright prospects for the future; and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation." One need not be a Lincoln admirer to recognize that DiLorenzo is making an unfair characterization. DiLorenzo actually gets so overwrought that at one point he attributes to Lincoln racist views Lincoln was attacking.

Masugi further asserts that DiLorenzo failed to recognize "a disunited America might have become prey for the designs of European imperial powers, which would have put an end to the experiment in self-government."

According to DiLorenzo, Masugi is selective in his presentation about Lincoln and "relies entirely on a few of Lincoln’s prettier speeches, ignoring his less attractive ones as well as his actual behavior."