The Unreal Lincoln.("The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War")(Book Review)

The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, by Thomas J. DiLorenzo (Prima, 352 pp., $24.95)

To get an idea of how truly awful this book is, consider that its author sneers at what he calls some "pledge of allegiance to the central government." (He means, of course, the pledge of allegiance to the flag and "to the republic for which it stands.") This offhand remark epitomizes Thomas DiLorenzo's feckless treatment of his subject, Abraham Lincoln and his place in the American political tradition. We should, nevertheless, treat this shabby work seriously, because it offers an occasion for reflection on the place of Lincoln and the Declaration of Independence in contemporary conservatism -- which has been wary of both.

DiLorenzo, a professor of economics at Loyola College in Baltimore, claims to offer "a new look" at Lincoln, in contrast to the prevalent "myths" about him; but what he actually does is recycle the articulate pro-Confederate views of Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Edgar Lee Masters, and Claude Bowers. He charges Lincoln with being a racist, a war criminal, and the decisive centralizer of the constitutional order and destroyer of American liberties.

In making the charge of racism, DiLorenzo sounds like an especially nasty liberal. He frequently distorts the meaning of the primary sources he cites, Lincoln most of all. Consider this inflammatory assertion: "Eliminating every last black person from American soil, Lincoln proclaimed, would be 'a glorious consummation.'" Compare the nuances and qualifications in what Lincoln actually said: "If as the friends of colonization hope, the present and coming generations of our countrymen shall by any means, succeed in freeing our land from the dangerous presence of slavery; and, at the same time, in restoring a captive people to their long-lost father-land, with bright prospects for the future; and this too, so gradually, that neither races nor individuals shall have suffered by the change, it will indeed be a glorious consummation." One need not be a Lincoln admirer to recognize that DiLorenzo is making an unfair characterization. DiLorenzo actually gets so overwrought that at one point he attributes to Lincoln racist views Lincoln was attacking.

DiLorenzo adopts as his own the fundamental mistake of leftist multiculturalist historians: confusing the issue of race with the much more fundamental one, which was slavery. Pulitzer prize-winning historian Don Fehrenbacher has carefully explicated the dilemma of principled statesmen of the antebellum era: Lincoln's Illinois was anti-slavery, but it also passed laws discriminating against blacks. This was not a paradox. The anti-slavery forces actually joined with racists to keep their state free of slavery, and also free of blacks.

These were treacherous waters for politicians to swim in. For Lincoln, a "universal feeling, whether well or ill-founded, can not be safely disregarded"; to do so would be to violate the principle of the consent of the governed. In disregarding the sentiments of the time and the anti-black rhetoric of Lincoln's opponents, such as Stephen Douglas, DiLorenzo ignores the political context of Lincoln's speeches. Lincoln promised only to put slavery "in the course of ultimate extinction," not to abolish it. He wanted a constitutional amendment to end slavery and would have compensated slaveholders; DiLorenzo obfuscates Lincoln's principled position, which left him scorned by abolitionists and slaveholders alike.

Fortunately, we are not dependent on DiLorenzo for an understanding of Lincoln's political philosophy; Lincoln himself summarized it in his Gettysburg Address and Second Inaugural. For Lincoln, the preservation of the equality of natural rights demands a strong government, but one limited in its powers. This founding principle leads politically to the need for consent of the governed, the basis of our republican government. But DiLorenzo maintains that the Declaration of Independence -- the key text on these questions -- was merely concerned with the independence of the several states, and that the states could therefore withdraw their initial consent to be governed under the 1787 Constitution. Citing the New England Federalists of the early 1800s, he argues that secession was always recognized as a legitimate, constitutional procedure. Indeed, for the Founders, "the most fundamental principle of political philosophy was the right of secession." But DiLorenzo ...