Many of my readers have expressed surprise at the way Abraham Lincoln is depicted in Marching Through Culpeper. I was very careful to use first hand comments from diaries and letters of both Northern and Southern citizens, because I knew eyebrows would be raised. The Lincoln cult has deified Lincoln rather than depicting him as the crafty politician and unpopular president he was. Therefore, for those of you who have asked for recommended reading, I will be reviewing pertinent books from time to time. None could be more appropriate to today’s political climate than Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s expose’ of Lincoln’s real agenda. This book was published two years after Marching Through Culpeper, so I was unable to draw from it to add more fire to Constance’s debates with Aaron. 
 
                                                   The Real Lincoln

  A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War

By Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Professor of Economics, Loyola College
 
Economists have a clearer vision of the causes of war than historians. They know it’s all about the money. Thomas DiLorenzo makes an airtight case that Lincoln should be remembered as the “The Great Centralizer” rather than “The Great Emancipator.” Lincoln idolized Henry Clay, whom he described as “my beau ideal of a statesman, the man for whom I fought all my humble life.” Henry Clay advocated “Americanism,” which was simply England’s corrupt mercantilism by another name. In a nutshell mercantilism favored a central bank that would print money to finance corporate welfare for railroads and others, along with high, protectionist tariffs which are also, of course, a form of corporate welfare. In 1832 Lincoln said, “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank…in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.”
 
The states’ rights Jeffersonian sentiment of the South stood between Lincoln and a national bank. Ever since President Andrew Jackson’s veto of the National Bank, the Whigs had been seeking an opportunity to reinstate it. The South upheld the view that internal improvements financed by taxpayer subsidies were unconstitutional. Keep in mind that because of the high protective tariff (the primary source of income for the Federal government), the importing South was paying a whopping 87% of Federal taxes in 1860. That’s right, the South, with less than half as many voters as the north, was paying 87% of Federal taxes. This money was being appropriated to build railroads in the North. In addition, the high tariff protected the profits of Northern manufacturers and the steel industry.
 
Lincoln was a highly skilled lawyer and his clients included the Illinois Central Railroad, then the largest railroad in the world. Lincoln received the largest fee ever paid a railroad lawyer by winning a pivotal case. By the 1850s his income averaged about $5,000 per year, three times what the governor of Illinois was paid. Lincoln also purchased land where he secretly learned the railroad would be built. He was a rich corporate lawyer.
 
Lincoln said very clearly in his first inaugural address that he had NO intention or right to interfere with slavery where it existed, but he intended to collect the taxes in the seceded states. He said, “The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, to collect the imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion…” Since Congress had just tripled the tariff rate, Lincoln was saying to Southerners, pay tribute or be invaded.
 
Lincoln violated the Constitution by declaring war without the consent of Congress, arresting legislators in Maryland, suspending writ of habeas corpus, and shutting down opposing newspapers. But the biggest cost of Lincoln’s war was the virtual destruction of states’ rights. The Federal government became the master, rather than the servant, of the people-especially once it imposed military conscription and income taxation on the population. The national bank controlled the money supply and today we live with the consequences-the Federal Reserve. Lincoln’s aggressive agenda triggered an uncontrollable swelling of big government, which has been tightening its vise grip on our republic to this very day.
 
I encourage you to read The Real Lincoln with an open mind in order to grasp the disastrous financial repercussions of the war, North and South, then and now. You may agree with Joseph Sobran, that it is “A devastating critique of America’s most famous president.”
 
Merry CHRISTmas to all! 

Prayer Power

Dear Heavenly Father, thank You for the truth of your word and for those who seek the truth, regardless of public sentiment. Give us wisdom to learn from the past. Bless each one reading this as they move through our season of giving thanks for Your infinite blessings, to the celebration of the birth of our Savior – the Prince of Peace–Your gift to mankind. Help us to remember amongst the season’s hustle and bustle that He and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life.