Lincoln Unmasked
Lincoln
Met With Hitler’s Approval
Lincoln’s
Great Immoral Crusade
Lincoln
Unmasked
“Harry Jaffa, the dean of what
DiLorenzo calls the “Lincoln cultists,” has more than once compared the Southern
cause to that of Nazi Germany. DiLorenzo embarrasses Jaffa in this book by
pointing out passages in Hitler’s Mein Kampf in which the German leader
expressed both his support for Lincoln’s war and his unwavering opposition to
the cause of states’ rights and political decentralization (which, as a
dictator seeking absolute power, he naturally sought to overturn in Germany).
Hitler even adopted Lincoln’s fanciful retelling of American history in which
the states were creatures of the Union rather than vice versa.”
By Tom Woods
October 12, 2006
Thomas DiLorenzo’s The
Real Lincoln (2002) was as much an event as it was a book. Here was a
brutally frank treatment of a political figure we are all expected to treat
with a quiet awe, and certainly not with the kind of serious and sustained
scrutiny reserved for mere mortals. With every major aspect of the standard
narrative that students are taught about Lincoln laughably and grotesquely
false, this book was a shocking reminder of suppressed truths. It sold
extremely well, managing the truly astonishing feat of reaching number two in
Amazon sales rank in the face of (surprise!) a complete media blackout. That
kind of success, in the absence of a major marketing and publicity campaign, is
almost completely unheard of.
In the wake of his last
book, How
Capitalism Saved America, DiLorenzo has returned to Lincoln once more in
the brand new Lincoln
Unmasked. Although readers should without a doubt read both books, Lincoln
Unmasked is in some ways even more incisive and relentless than The Real
Lincoln. To get an idea of this latest book’s breadth, consider just some of
its chapter titles: "The Lincoln Myths — Exposed," "Fake Lincoln
Quotes," "The Myth of the Morally Superior u2018Yankee,’"
"An Abolitionist Who Despised Lincoln," "The Truth about States’
Rights," "Lincoln’s Big Lie," "A u2018Great Crime’: The Arrest
Warrant for the Chief Justice of the United States," "The Great
Railroad Lobbyist," "The Great Protectionist," "The Great
Inflationist," "Lincolnite Totalitarians," "The Lincoln
Cult on Imprisoning War Opponents," and "Contra the Lincoln
Cult."
The reader of Lincoln Unmasked is
in for a great many mischievous pleasures. Consider: Harry Jaffa, the dean of
what DiLorenzo calls the "Lincoln cultists," has more than once
compared the Southern cause to that of Nazi Germany. DiLorenzo embarrasses
Jaffa in this book by pointing out passages in Hitler’s Mein Kampf in which the
German leader expressed both his support for Lincoln’s war and his unwavering
opposition to the cause of states’ rights and political decentralization
(which, as a dictator seeking absolute power, he naturally sought to overturn
in Germany). Hitler even adopted Lincoln’s fanciful retelling of American
history in which the states were creatures of the Union rather than vice versa.
In Germany, Hitler promised that
the Nazis "would totally eliminate states’ rights altogether: Since for us
the state as such is only a form, but the essential is its content, the nation,
the people, it is clear that everything else must be subordinated to its
sovereign interests. In particular we cannot grant to any individual state
within the nation and the state representing it state sovereignty and
sovereignty in point of political power." Thus the "mischief of
individual federated states…must cease and will some day cease…. National
Socialism as a matter of principle must lay claim to the right to force its
principles on the whole German nation without consideration of previous
federated state boundaries." Which side was the Nazi one again, Professor
Jaffa?
DiLorenzo punctures all the
typical Lincoln myths (about slavery, the war, and so on) and then some. One
example will have to suffice: Lincoln’s admirers then and now, anxious to show
him to be a convinced Christian, claim that Lincoln exclaimed, after viewing
the graves at Gettysburg: "I then and there consecrated myself to Christ.
Yes, I do love Jesus!" The trouble is, the quotation is phony: Lincoln
never said anything like it. By all accounts a skeptic, Lincoln had to be
transformed by his supporters into a respectable, pious Christian. No wonder
one astute clergyman observed that Lincoln became a Christian "six months
after his death."
One of the most important
contributions of Lincoln Unmasked is its treatment of how the Lincoln myth is
employed today. The Lincoln legacy can be and has been cited on behalf of all
manner of political atrocities, from the decimation of civil liberties to the
waging of war against civilian populations. The religious veneer of Lincoln’s
political rhetoric seared into the American consciousness the idea of the U.S.
government as an instrument of God’s will, to be employed without mercy against
any force so impious as to resist it. This conception of the federal government
works even for politicians who might feel uncomfortable with openly religious
language: the idea of a righteous central authority steamrolling all opposition
— ipso facto wicked and perverse, of course — as part of the inevitable forward
march of history fits quite nicely into just about any nationalist agenda, left
or right. This is why the Lincoln myth is so stubborn, so resistant to
evidence, and so difficult to overturn: the entire American political class has
a vital stake in its preservation.
Eric Foner, the Marxist professor
of history who has spent much of his career at Columbia University, has even
cited Lincoln on behalf of the preservation of the Soviet Union. DiLorenzo
cites a February 1991 article in The Nation called "Lincoln’s
Lesson," in which Foner denounced the secession movements in Latvia,
Lithuania, Estonia, and Georgia, and called upon Mikhail Gorbachev to suppress
them with the same ruthlessness Lincoln showed the South. According to Foner,
no "leader of a powerful nation" should tolerate "the
dismemberment of the Soviet Union." "The Civil War," he
explained with approval, "was a central step in the consolidation of
national authority in the United States." And then: "The Union,
Lincoln passionately believed, was a permanent government. Gorbachev would
surely agree." For all the talk about slavery, there it is in a nutshell:
the "Civil War" and Lincoln’s legacy involved the violent suppression
of independence, exactly what Foner wanted to see in the Soviet Union. What
better condemnation of Lincoln could we ask for?
With Christmas now on the horizon,
I urge readers not merely to buy and read this book. Buy ten
copies and give them as gifts. Our political and intellectual
establishments thrive on lies and propaganda, and they hate nothing more than
someone who exposes them, revealing them for the liars and ignoramuses they
are. That is why they hate Thomas DiLorenzo and why we owe him our respect, and
our thanks.
This article will appear in the
winter issue of Southern Partisan magazine and is printed here with permission.
Professor Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
[view his website; send him mail] holds a bachelor’s degree in
history from Harvard and his Ph.D. from Columbia. He is senior fellow in
American history at the Ludwig von Mises
Institute. His books include How
the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (get a free
chapter here), The
Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, and the New
York Times bestseller The
Politically Incorrect Guide to American History.
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