The following is a guest post book review of The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo. This book was selected by people participating in http://freedombookclub.com as their Book of the Month for December 2011. FURB is managing editor of that website.
(Furb with 2 of his daughters at a local hockey game)
Firstly, thank you Heather, for allowing me to be a contributor to your blog. To the reader, I want you to know that I have travelled. Some of the places I have travelled are Quebec and the maritime provinces of Canada, England, Bermuda, and all over the United States. Due to familial constraints (willingly entered into by me), I now rarely travel physically. Mentally and spiritually, I am still travelling through the world of ideas, and I want to tell you about a journey I just finished.
"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. And, it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone." ~ Rod Serling, creator of The Twilight Zone
On my most recent journey I hired a guide. His name is Tom. He lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. But there is one unusual thing about Tom; he is a time traveler. This isn't the first time that I have hired Tom to take me on a journey. On my previous journey with Tom he showed me some pretty amazing things, but nothing had prepared me for this trip into the past. The last journey was a journey where I experienced many wonderful and happy things. Tom showed me how capitalism saved America.
This time, Tom has shown me a scene altogether scary and sometimes gruesome. On this trip Tom has taken me from Illinois circa 1840, to New England at the end of 1814, to South Carolina in April 1861, and to various physical points in time and space in the United States and the deep south.
The main point of this trip was to visit with... to really get to know that mythic figure of history, Abraham Lincoln. Having been keenly interested in history my whole life, I was eager to learn more about Father Abraham, the Great Emancipator, and preserver of the Union. What really drove Abraham Lincoln to enter into politics in the first place? Tom has visited with Father Abraham, his friends, and lots and lots of Lincoln's friends and protégés, and with his detractors, where they could be found, in an attempt to introduce him as a real man.
Tom introduces me to Lincoln as a young trial lawyer first, filled with a frothy political ambition. Young Abe, infatuated with Henry Clay and his "American System," seemingly had one motive: to become a wealthy merchant, a peddler man, a peddler of political favors and influence through the consolidation of power, implemented through an all powerful central government. Tom shows us how Father Abraham, as a young state legislator in Illinois became known as Leaping Lincoln for jumping out of the legislative chamber's window to avoid having to cast a vote on a bill. Tom shows how Lincoln matured into a United States Representative, who openly expressed white supremacist sentiments, pushed legislation to consolidate power in the hands of the few and ladle out pork chop after pork chop to his political patrons. But the worst was yet to come. Tom shows how Lincoln used his mastery of doublespeak to perpetrate an inhumane war against the secessionist south while portraying it as a fight against slavery (while freeing no slaves). Lincoln is shown to be a mostly an inhumane individual who destroyed the United States system of voluntary association between the states, and went on to break international law by tacitly allowing the burning, looting, and raping of the South and it's women, especially the people of African origin. On this journey, I was awakened to harsh reality of a brutal man, who is raised up in alabaster white in his memorial, but whose garments are stained with the blood of many. Particularly shocking to me was Father Abraham’s total crackdown on dissent, which included the suppression of free speech, indefinite detention of his detractors (including newspapers and their editors). Eventually Lincoln's policies lead to the imprisonment and deportation of a sitting member of the United States House of Representatives, which the following passage documents: "At 2:30 AM on the morning of May 4, 1863, armed Federal soldiers under the command of General Ambrose Burnside knocked down the doors of the Dayton, Ohio, home of Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham and arrested him without a civil warrant; they then threw him into a military prison in Cincinnati, Ohio. Congressman Vallandigham was subsequently deported by Lincoln to the Southern states, and he then moved to Canada. Vallandigham's "crime" was making a speech in response to Lincoln's State of the Union Address in which he criticized the president for his unconstitutional usurpation of power. For this he was declared a "traitor" by Lincoln and imprisoned without trial. The Democrats in Ohio (a loyal Union state and home to Generals Grant and Sherman) were so outraged that they nominated Vallandigham for the office of governor even though he had been deported. In his speech Vallandigham expressed his principled devotion to both the Union and the Constitution, which is why he was so critical of Lincoln. He made the point that Congress alone had the power to borrow money, and yet Lincoln had usurped that power... [by] the suppression of the press, the suspension of habeas corpus, the blockade of Southern ports, and other dictatorial acts." I recommend Tom as an excellent guide. He is a guide that will bring you back to the time of The Real Lincoln. When you return, you will better understand today's world and what is happening in it. He may even inspire you to take another journey by sidestepping the perils of the Age of Lincoln, many of which are eerie parallels in the Age of Peace under Obama.
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