After an introductory chapter, Chapter Two documents Lincoln's opposition to racial equality. Lincoln consistently argued that blacks were inferior to whites, and his opposition to allowing slavery into the new territories was based on his desire to keep the territories free of blacks. As a member of the Illinois legislature, Lincoln supported removing all of the free blacks from the state, and he supported a Constitutional amendment prohibiting free blacks from migrating into the state. A Republican U.S. Senator who Lincoln was close to explained that "We, the Republican Party, are the white man's party. We are for the free white man, and for making white labor acceptable and honorable, which it can never be when Negro slave labor is brought into competition with it".
The author debunks the idea that people in the North were friendly to blacks. He says that 'The overwhelming majority of white Northerners cared little about the welfare of the slaves and treated the blacks who lived among them with contempt, ridicule, discrimination, and sometimes violence." He quotes Tocqueville in "Democracy in America" as observing that "the prejudice of race appears to be stronger in the states that have abolished slavery than in those where it still exists; and nowhere is it so intolerant as in those states where servitude has never been known".
In the third chapter DiLorenzo writes about peaceful emancipation. He stresses that only in the U.S. was a war needed to free the slaves. In every other country, "slavery ended through either manumission or some form of compensated emancipation". He points out that slaveowners could have been compensated for their lost slaves, plus each emancipated slave given forty acres and a mule, for less cost than the horrific Civil War that Lincoln presided over.
In Chapter four the author writes about 'Lincoln's Real Agenda". From the time he entered politics in 1832 when he first ran for public office, Lincoln was always a Whig. DiLornezo writes that Lincoln was "almost single-mindedly devoted to the Whig agenda--protectionism, government control of the money supply through a nationalized banking system, and government subsidies for railroad, shipping and canal-building businesses."
The tariff issue is still relevant today, with Trump's policies currently under discussion. DiLornzo writes that "Convincing consumers that higher prices are in their best interest is an absurd proposition on its face, but clever protectionist propagandists have always taken advantage of the public's ignorance of economics to pull the wool over its eyes." Certainly apropos of what Trump is doing today.
In Chapter Five the author talks about the myth of secession as "treason". He points out that our country was born with an act of secession when we separated from Britain. The Declaration of Independence was based on the idea that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that whenever government becomes destructive of the peoples' rights, the people have the right to secede and form a new government.
The author describes how there was a strong secessionist movement in New England during the entire Jefferson administration and most of the Madison administration (1801-1814). I had previously known that opposition to the War of 1812 had led to a serious secesionist movement in New England, but the length of the movement was a surprise to me. The main point here is that all during this vigorous debate about secession in New England, the wisdom of secession was debated, but never was the inherent right of secession questioned.
The author describes how there were strong secesionist movements in the "middle states"--New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. These states contained three types of secessionists: those who wanted to join the Southern Confederacy, those who wished to form their own "Central Confederacy", and those who wanted to alliow the South to go in peace.
An analysis of 495 editorials from Northern newspapers during the late 1860 to mid-1861 time period shows overwhelming support for the right of the Southern states to secede. Horace Greeley aptly summed up the sentiment when he wrote that "We hope never to live in a republic whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets". Here again, duirng this whole secssion debate, never was the right to secede questioned. Lincoln's idea that secession was treason was something he made up out of whole cloth.
In Chapter Six DiLorenzo exmaines the question of whether Lincoln was a dictator. Certainly he was, as he shredded the Constitution, and committed all of the same abuses that King George III was accused of in the Declaration of Independence. He declared martial law and suspended habeas corpus, and ordered the arrest and imprisonment of virtually everyone who disagreed with his expreme views of presidential war powers. Chief Justice Roger Taney issued an opinion that the presidenrt had no lawful power to suspend habeas corpus, but Lincoln simply ignored it.
In May of 1961 a special election was held in Maryland to fill ten empty seats in the House of Delegates. Suspecting them of harboring secessionist sympathies, Lincoln had the candidates arrested and sent, without being charged with any crime, to military prison. Lincoln conitnued to interfere in Maryland poiltics, sending soldiers into the state to arrest and detain anyone opposing his war policies durng the regular November election.
Lincoln's suppression of the press was eqally despicable. When a list of more than a hundred Northern newspapers that had editorialized against going to war was published, Lincoln orderd his Postmaster General to deny mail delivery to those papers. His Secretary of State Seward had his own goon squad of secret police, which "scoured the countryside for the editors of any newspaper, large and small, that did not support the Lincoln administration's war policy and had them arrested and imprisoned."
In sum, nothing the current Trump administration is doing comes close to the evils perpetrated by Abrham Lincoln during his brutal presidency.
Chaper Seven documents the atrocities against civilians committed by Lincoln's soldiers, against all laws of war. The remaining chapters discuss the centralization of power in the national executive that Lincoln was responsible for. The author's Libertarian views cause him to give undue attention to this part of the story. I would have preferred more info on the evils of the war itself. He had already established in Chapter Four that Lincoln was a dyed-in-the-wool Whig who favored increased federal power at the expense of the states. And in Chapter Six he had already established Lincoln's dictatorial inclinations.
No comments:
Post a Comment