Posted by
Recreational Ranter on Friday, September 12, 2008 1:34:50 PM
Abraham Lincoln: tyrant, criminal. The worst President in the history of the republic!
Outrageous? Un-American? Radical? Treasonous?
On the contrary, there is more than ample data to support this assertion, whether your ancestors hailed from the North or South (or neither). Dr. Thomas DiLorenzo (a native of the North), professor of economics at Loyala College in Maryland, senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and author of several books, including Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe, supports this claim with irrefutable evidence. Among the myths he obliterates:
- "Lincoln invaded the South to free the slaves." In fact he ". . . was perfectly willing to see Southern slavery
persist long past his own lifetime, for all he knew, as long as the Southern states remained in the Union
and continued to pay federal taxes." (p. 25). Further, "Lincoln clearly stated the real cause and purpose
of the war on numerous occasions, including in his famous August 22, 1862, letter to newspaper editor
Horace Greeley. There he wrote, 'My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is
not either to save or destroy slavery.'" (ibid.)
Okay, let's look at this saving-the-Union myth a bit more:
- "Lincoln saved the Union." DiLorenzo points out that, "Lincoln did more than any other individual to destroy
the voluntary union of the founding fathers. All the founding documents - the Articles of Confederation, the
Declaration of Independence, the Treaty with Great Britain, the Constitution - refer to the states as 'free
and independent.'" (p. 25) In fact, three of these sovereign states - Virginia, Rhode Island, and New York -
made it a condition of their ratifying the Constitution that they reserve the right of withdrawal (i.e.secession)
from this new union should it prove abusive of their liberties.
No state can have more nor less rights than another. When this condition was accepted, all states, current and future, maintained this right of withdrawal. This isn't an interpretation; this is what happened! Lincoln pulled out of thin air this so-called mandate to "save the Union." No such mandate ever existed. Instead, he unconstitutionally waged war on eleven sovereign states, killing well over 600,000 soldiers - not to mention untold numbers of southern civilians, black and white, to assert a phony claim!
- "Lincoln was a champion of the Constitution." Pardon me while I throw up! Let's see, ". . . he illegally suspend-
ed the writ of habeas corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political opponents; shut down
some three hundred opposition newspapers; censored all telegraph communication; imprisoned a large
percentage of the duly elected legislature of Maryland as well as the mayor of Baltimore; illegally orchestrated
the secession of West Virginia; deported the most outspoken member of the Democratic opposition, Con-
gressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio; systematically disarmed the border states in violation of the
Second Amendment; and effectively declared himself dictator." (p. 27)
These are just some of the myths surrounding Lincoln and his supposed messianic presidency. Why bring it up? Because the precedents set during his administration are haunting us to this day. Every time I hear a conservative talkshow host supporting the expansion of federal power over us, for example, and citing Lincoln's policies during the War Between the States as precedent and justification, I see Father Abraham's fingerprints.
No president ever perfectly followed the Constitution, but there was enough of the old ethos left among our citizenry and the other branches of government that kept things pretty much on track, with a few course adjustments here and there. But Lincoln didn't just deviate off course a little bit; he deliberately conducted a seismic, tectonic shift. The likes of TR, Wilson, and FDR continued in his diabolical tradition.
More on this in future posts, no doubt.