Was Abe Lincoln a Dictator?

I just loooove revisionist history. Even when the facts are skewed and in error, it's so much fun!!!

creating several new states without the consent of the citizens of those states

With malice towards all and charity towards none of Abraham Lincoln's principles and actions, The Real Lincoln is the latest attempt to finish the job so ignobly begun by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865. Although Lincoln breathed no more after that, his character and reputation lived on, to be sniped at ever since. The Lincoln haters are an increasingly diverse lot, with strange and not always compatible purposes. The alleged purpose of Thomas DiLorenzo's invective is to defend constitutionalism and free market economics. He claims to demonstrate that Lincoln was an enemy of both, as well as a hypocrite on the subject of "racial equality." What he mainly demonstrates, however, is that his aim is not nearly as good as Booth's.

This brief Wikipedia article will introduce members to Thomas DiLorenzo.

Dishonest About Abe is a review of Mr. DiLorenzo's book, which can be read at this Claremont Institute site.

Thomas Krannawitter wrote:

With malice towards all and charity towards none of Abraham Lincoln's principles and actions, The Real Lincoln is the latest attempt to finish the job so ignobly begun by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865. Although Lincoln breathed no more after that, his character and reputation lived on, to be sniped at ever since. The Lincoln haters are an increasingly diverse lot, with strange and not always compatible purposes. The alleged purpose of Thomas DiLorenzo's invective is to defend constitutionalism and free market economics. He claims to demonstrate that Lincoln was an enemy of both, as well as a hypocrite on the subject of "racial equality." What he mainly demonstrates, however, is that his aim is not nearly as good as Booth's.

The contention that a majority of Americans in 1861 believed that states had the right to secede from the Union is without foundation, and the member here offers it as a statement from authority, without substantiation--it is, in short, horseshit.

Is your horseshit your personal opinion? I must assume so, as you do not quote a source.

Prior to Fort Sumter, there was widespread sentiment IN THE NORTH in favor of allowing the Southern states to peacefully secede. This sentiment was so pervasive in fact, that there were individual secession movements in what at the time were called the 'middle states' - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. (William Wright, 'The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States' (Rutherford, N.J.:Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973).

Those of a legalistic turn of mind in the seceding states who bothered to argue the position at all claimed that as the Constitution does not reserve to the Federal government the right to expel States from the Union, it is therefore a right reserved to the Several States or the People under the provisions of the Xth Amendment--about the only thing which can be stated with certainty in regard to such an argument is that the Constitution is mute on the subject.

Oh? The Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution, reserved to each state 'its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled".

The states that created the Constitution and delegated certain powers to the federal gov't AS THEIR AGENT, while reserving the right to withdraw from that compact, as three states did explicitly.

But this history - the true history of the founding - always stood in the way of the grandiose plans of those who advocated centralized gov't power, with themselves in charge, of course, for such power could not be exercised to its fullest extent with such a limited and decentralized state. That, of course, was the way the founding fathers wanted it.

So the advocates of centralization beginning with Lincoln's fellow Whig D. Webster, did what virtually all centralized gov't powers were to do in the late 19th and 20th centuries: they rewrote history to suit their political purposes.

This notion - that the federal Union preceded the states - is not only a lie, but a 'spectacular lie', in the words of Emory University philosopher Daniel W. Livingston. It was this spectacular lie that Lincoln embraced as his main rationale for denying the right of secession to the Southern states.

Commenting on the Gettysburg Address 57 years later, H.L. Mencken said:

It is poetry, not logic; beauty; not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -that gov't of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country -and for nearly twenty years that veto was so efficient they they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary'.

In Article One, Section Ten, which lists those powers which are prohibited to the States is the following paragraph:

No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

Given that the Lincoln administration recognized to right of secession by any state, the above provision meant that the raising of troops and the levying of war upon Federal installations was considered by the administration to be a violation of the constitution, and evidence of a state of insurrection existing at the South.

The Southern states tried repeatedly to secede peacefully. They were not allowed to. Shelby Foote, author of The Civil War, wrote that 'Lincoln had maneuvered the Confederates into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war.' Quite a few Northern newspapers recognized that Lincoln wanted a war and that he had maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. On April 16, 1861, the Buffalo Daily Courier editorialized that 'the affair at Fort Sumter has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified". The New York Evening Day Book wrote on April 17, 1861, that the event at Ft. Sumter was a 'cunningly devised scheme' to 'arose, and if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South.' The Providence Daily Post says, in 1861, 'for three weeks the administration newspapers have been assuring us that Ft. Sumter would be abandoned, but Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor,' and so he did just that. The Jersey City American Standard, April 12, 1861, 'there is a madness and ruthlessness' in Lincoln's behavior 'which is astounding....this unarmed vessel....is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South, which act by the pre-determination of the gov't is to be the pretext for letting loose the horrors of war.'


Earlier, in Article One, Section Nine, it is stated:

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Therefore, and because this is in the section which is entitled "Limits on Congress," Lincoln's administration took the line that the executive power could suspend writs because of a state of rebellion at the South. Lincoln's 1862 proclamation was careful to limit the suspension to cases arising from martial law.

That's hilarious. What delightful "fact" will we learn next? That the majority of slaves adored their chains and never wanted to be freed because slavery was really so beneficial and benificent?

I have problems with Wickipedia as a sound, reliable source, but Setanta could hardly be called an enthusiastic supporter of Bush, or his administration. Setanta's grasp of the facts and fine details of the history of the American Civil War is exceedingly fine. I know that I would be reluctant to challenge him on the facts without doing some pretty serious research. I'm certain that Setanta is citing Wickipeda as a mere convience since he has far better citations available to him beyond anything you might have access to ... much less the willingness to read and ponder.

Blackening the reputations of American Presidents seems to be a popular support among those who see us as a virulent and deadly cancer bent on destroying the world.

Setanta wrote:

This brief Wikipedia article will introduce members to Thomas DiLorenzo.

Dishonest About Abe is a review of Mr. DiLorenzo's book, which can be read at this Claremont Institute site.

Thomas Krannawitter wrote:

With malice towards all . . . etc., etc.,

You'll have to come up with a better source than wikipedia. Apparently the folks on the Bush Supporters Aftermath thread don't put any credence in it.

Is your horseshit your personal opinion? I must assume so, as you do not quote a source.

Prior to Fort Sumter, there was widespread sentiment IN THE NORTH in favor of allowing the Southern states to peacefully secede. This sentiment was so pervasive in fact, that there were individual secession movements in what at the time were called the 'middle states' - New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. (William Wright, 'The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States' (Rutherford, N.J.:Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1973).

Oh? The Articles of Confederation, which preceded the Constitution, reserved to each state 'its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled".

The states that created the Constitution and delegated certain powers to the federal gov't AS THEIR AGENT, while reserving the right to withdraw from that compact, as three states did explicitly.

But this history - the true history of the founding - always stood in the way of the grandiose plans of those who advocated centralized gov't power, with themselves in charge, of course, for such power could not be exercised to its fullest extent with such a limited and decentralized state. That, of course, was the way the founding fathers wanted it.

So the advocates of centralization beginning with Lincoln's fellow Whig D. Webster, did what virtually all centralized gov't powers were to do in the late 19th and 20th centuries: they rewrote history to suit their political purposes.

This notion - that the federal Union preceded the states - is not only a lie, but a 'spectacular lie', in the words of Emory University philosopher Daniel W. Livingston. It was this spectacular lie that Lincoln embraced as his main rationale for denying the right of secession to the Southern states.

Commenting on the Gettysburg Address 57 years later, H.L. Mencken said:

It is poetry, not logic; beauty; not sense. Think of the argument in it. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination -that gov't of the people, by the people, for the people, should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision of the rest of the country -and for nearly twenty years that veto was so efficient they they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary'.

The Southern states tried repeatedly to secede peacefully. They were not allowed to.

Shelby Foote, author of The Civil War, wrote that 'Lincoln had maneuvered the Confederates into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war.' Quite a few Northern newspapers recognized that Lincoln wanted a war and that he had maneuvered the South into firing the first shot. On April 16, 1861, the Buffalo Daily Courier editorialized that 'the affair at Fort Sumter has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified". The New York Evening Day Book wrote on April 17, 1861, that the event at Ft. Sumter was a 'cunningly devised scheme' to 'arose, and if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South.' The Providence Daily Post says, in 1861, 'for three weeks the administration newspapers have been assuring us that Ft. Sumter would be abandoned, but Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor,' and so he did just that. The Jersey City American Standard, April 12, 1861, 'there is a madness and ruthlessness' in Lincoln's behavior 'which is astounding....this unarmed vessel....is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South, which act by the pre-determination of the gov't is to be the pretext for letting loose the horrors of war.'

BS. More to follow on that one.

Since Setanta is so well versed in so many things, I'm sure he also knows that the Pledge of Allegiance was written by an avowed socialist, Walter Bellamy.

pachelbel wrote:

Setanta wrote:

This brief Wikipedia article will introduce members to Thomas DiLorenzo.

Dishonest About Abe is a review of Mr. DiLorenzo's book, which can be read at this Claremont Institute site.

Thomas Krannawitter wrote:

With malice towards all . . . etc., etc.,

You'll have to come up with a better source than wikipedia. Apparently the folks on the Bush Supporters Aftermath thread don't put any credence in it.

If you dispute the truth of what is stated in that brief Wikipedia article, you need only post here those parts to which you object. As i pointed out, it only introduces the person named to the reader, and lists his academic credentials, his academic employment, and the names of his principle works, as well as giving just two sentences on the positions which he espouses.

If you want to challenge the accuracy of the Wikipedia article, then you need simply tell us to what you object, and then inform the boys and girls at Wikipedia.

pachelbel, simply put, Lincoln's one goal was to preserve the union. Sorry. but I haven't read through all the responses.