The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War is a biography of Abraham Lincoln written by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, a former professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland, in 2002. He was severely critical of Lincoln's United States presidency.

Summary

DiLorenzo criticizes Lincoln for 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. He argues that Lincoln's views on race exhibited forms of bigotry that are commonly overlooked today, such as belief in white racial superiority, against miscegenation, and even against black men being jurors. He says 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 economic plan. DiLorenzo regards Lincoln as the political and ideological heir of Alexander Hamilton, and contends that Lincoln achieved by the use of armed force the centralized state which Hamilton failed to create in the early years of the United States.

DiLorenzo's negative view of Lincoln is explicitly derived from his anarcho-capitalist views. He considers Lincoln to have opened the way to later instances of government involvement in the American economy, for example Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, of which DiLorenzo strongly disapproves. DiLorenzo objects to historians who described Lincoln as having carried out "a capitalist revolution", since in DiLorenzo's view protectionist policies such as Lincoln strongly advocated and implemented "are not true Capitalism." In DiLorenzo's explicitly expressed view, only free trade. DiLorenzo declares protectionism and mercantilism to be one the same, using the two as interchangeable and frequently talking of "Lincoln's Mercantilist policies".

In the foreword to DiLorenzo's book, Walter E. Williams, a professor of economics at George Mason University, says that "Abraham Lincoln's direct statements indicated his support for slavery," and adds that he "defended slave owners' right to own their property" by supporting the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

Reception

Herman Belz reviewed DiLorenzo's book together with Charles Adams's When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, and claimed that it quoted Lincoln out of context, saying:

He says they have a "simple-minded understanding of the relationship between politics and economics, between moral ends and productive entrepreneurial activity."

Gamble listed numerous fallacies of the book as follows: Masugi provides the following example:

Ken Whitefield noted that:

Writing in 2013 about DiLorenzo's book and the work of other "Lincoln haters", Rich Lowry said:

See also

  • Forced into Glory

Notes

Further reading

  • Presentation by DiLorenzo on The Real Lincoln, May 4, 2002, C-SPAN
  • The Real Abraham Lincoln: A Debate debate transcript with Harry V. Jaffa & Thomas J. DiLorenzo, May 2002
  • Abraham Lincoln interview with Thomas J. DiLorenzo by C-SPAN, 2008 <small>(YouTube)</small>