Amazon.com: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War: Books: Thomas Dilorenzo

Amazon.com: The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War: Books: Thomas Dilorenzo: "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (Paperback)"

This being Fedruary 12 - and the 199th anniversary of the birth of "Honest Abe" - the subject of America's worst president seemed an appropriate subject on which to return to publishing my ruminations on public affairs.

I am happy that Thomas DiLorenzo's excellent The Real Lincoln is available in a paperback edition. I bought and read the hardcover edition several years ago and recommend it highly.

The question of Lincoln and his legacy may seem to belong to the dim, dark past. But, like other seminal events of our history - the motives and character of those who colonized America, the struggle to establish constitutional self-government, etc. - a clear and correct understanding of the facts, rather than the government-approved myths taught in government schools, is essential to understanding that history and evaluating our stewardship of the legacy bequeathed to us by so many who suffered, even unto death, for our liberties.

The book is frankly critical of Lincoln and the fables told about him. The Lincoln we find in The Real Lincoln is a white supremacist of a sort with whom even Gov. Ross Barnett of Mississippi, or Gov. George Wallace of Alabama, or Gov. Lester Maddox of Georgia, might well have scrupled to share a stage. This Lincoln also had a view of the nature of constitutional government very much at odds with the traditions of this country.

Walter E. Williams, the celebrated columnist and professor of economics, begins his foreword for the book this way:

In 1831, long before the War between the States, South Carolina Senator John C. Calhoun said, "Stripped of all its covering, the naked question is, whether ours is a federal or consolidated government; a constitutional or absolute one; a government resting solidly on the basis of the sovereignty of the States, or on the unrestrained will of a majority; a form of government, as in all other unlimited ones, in which injustice, violence, and force must ultimately prevail." The War between the States answered that question and produced the foundation for the kind of government we have today: consolidated and absolute, based on the unrestrained will of the majority, with force, threats, and intimidation being the order of the day.

DiLorenzo demonstrates how great a revolution in governmental principles Lincoln's unnecessary war was. I would say as great a revolutionary turn as that by which we broke free from British rule, but that time a regression toward tyranny.

It would be immensely fitting if, a year from now, we could celebrate the bicentennial of the birth of a truly great American statesman who also began life in a humble home in Kentucky and rose to the leadership of a great republic founded on the principles of the American Revolution. I refer, of course, to Jefferson Davis.