Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe | 
|  | | | Title: | Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe | | Author: | Thomas Dilorenzo | | Publisher: | Three Rivers Press | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 27 November, 2007 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0307338428 / 9780307338426 | | List Price: | $12.95 | | You Save: | $2.59 | | Amazon Price: | $10.36 | |
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Product Description
What if you were told that the revered leader Abraham Lincoln was actually a political tyrant who stifled his opponents by suppressing their civil rights? What if you learned that the man so affectionately referred to as the “Great Emancipator” supported white supremacy and pledged not to interfere with slavery in the South? Would you suddenly start to question everything you thought you knew about Lincoln and his presidency?
You should.
Thomas J. DiLorenzo, who ignited a fierce debate about Lincoln’s legacy with his book The Real Lincoln, now presents a litany of stunning new revelations that explode the most enduring (and pernicious) myths about our sixteenth president. Marshaling an astonishing amount of new evidence, Lincoln Unmasked offers an alarming portrait of a political manipulator and opportunist who bears little resemblance to the heroic, stoic, and principled figure of mainstream history.
Did you know that Lincoln . . .
• did NOT save the union? In fact, Lincoln did more than any other individual to destroy the voluntary union the Founding Fathers recognized.
• did NOT want to free the slaves? Lincoln, who did not believe in equality of the races, wanted the Constitution to make slavery “irrevocable.”
• was NOT a champion of the Constitution? Contrary to his high-minded rhetoric, Lincoln repeatedly trampled on the Constitution—and even issued an arrest warrant for the chief justice of the United States!
• was NOT a great statesman? Lincoln was actually a warmonger who manipulated his own people into a civil war.
• did NOT utter many of his most admired quotations? DiLorenzo exposes a legion of statements that have been falsely attributed to Lincoln for generations—usually to enhance his image.
In addition to detailing Lincoln’s offenses against the principles of freedom, equality, and states’ rights, Lincoln Unmasked exposes the vast network of academics, historians, politicians, and other “gatekeepers” who have sanitized his true beliefs and willfully distorted his legacy. DiLorenzo reveals how the deification of Lincoln reflects a not-so-hidden agenda to expand the size and scope of the American state far beyond what the Founding Fathers envisioned—an expansion that Lincoln himself began.
The hagiographers have shaped Lincoln’s image to the point that it has become more fiction than fact. With Lincoln Unmasked, DiLorenzo shows us an Abraham Lincoln without the rhetoric, lies, and political bias that have clouded a disastrous president’s enduring damage to the nation.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews:
• Lincoln Unmasked 10 November, 2008
Another good book by Thomas DiLorenzo. If you are interested in facts rather than the Lincoln loving lionizing propagandists.
Dale Roberts Author of Tales of Travis Hawkins McCleod
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2MA9X0K9ZLPAM
• Some Good Points But Repetitive 05 December, 2008
The Lincoln "cult", as Professor DiLorenzo calls them, has deified Lincoln to such a degree that some criticism is welcome. However, this book is too similiar to his previous book, The Real Lincoln, and doesn't contain much new information. Already, basic students of history should know Lincoln was a racist who fought the war primarily to save the Union, not to free the slaves. DiLorenzo's argument for the constitutionality of secession-which I agree with--was already covered in The Real Lincoln. I don't see much sense in getting this book if you already own that one.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2T2OVNIRFWS4R
• An Economist Who Writes About History 07 December, 2008
One of DiLorenzo's own quotes perhaps says it best: "Some of the most renowned Lincoln Biographers fail to understand the meaning and importance of these economic issues, and for good reason: they are historians, not economists" (p.101-102). That is pretty confidently said for an economist writing about a historical topic. Of course, according to Dilorenzo, not being a historian is a good thing, if you want to write about history, otherwise you're (almost) automatically member of a cult. Apparently, it helps not to know too much of what you write about, except when it is economics.
The result is a strange little book, that has its merits as a historical document and a reminder that some views (like federalism and secession as revolution) are still debated (albeit by non-historians). Oddly enough, one of DiLorenzo's main arguments is that a certain "Lincoln cult" of scholars is blocking all dissenting and negative information about Lincoln, but most of the sources he quotes are modern ones (which, in my view, is kind of contradictory).
Another warped sort of argument is how scholars and historians have wrongly educated schoolchildren with the Lincoln myths that DiLorenzo "debunks." Firstly, some of the myths are scarcely believed by true scholars (e.g. "Lincoln invaded the South to free the slaves"); secondly, when are schoolchildren ever educated by the academics who write Lincoln books?
DiLorenzo seems to have a beef with historians, when he illustrates a lack of understanding of history or historical context. He quotes single sources and singular interpretations, and treats them as authorities by the single characteristic that they disagree with general scholarship.
In his support for secession, his use of sources is lopsided to say the least. He freely quotes anything or anyone who supports his case (meanwhile still limiting the number of sources to a few), but does nothing to look through history how consistent those people were in their own lives. In addition, while DiLorenzo uses quotes by Madison and Jefferson, he neglects whatever federalists like Hamilton or Adams might have said. If you only quote supporters, it is easy to win an argument.
I was particularly bothered by the comparison of the American Revolution to the South's Secession. "The Declaration [of Independence] was, first and foremost, a Declaration of Secession," he says (p.88). No it wasn't: it was a justification of their revolutionary secession, in Lockean fashion. Most of the Declaration is an enumeration of the "long train of abuses" that the American colonies were subjected to by the King of England, and that gave them the right to break loose. Consider the text of the Declaration:
"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; [...] But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."
Lincoln was hardly elected, and the South seceded for reasons that had mostly to do with slavery (see "Apostles of Disunion" for an elaboration of this argument).
When writing about a Michael Lind's book "What Lincoln Believed," DiLorenzo dismisses the economic arguments therein: "In any event, there are some useful facts in the book. If nothing else, those readers with some education in economics will get a few good laughs" (p.198). When used in mirror-like reflection, this is another apt quote about "Lincoln Unmasked": If nothing else, those readers with some education in history will get a few good laughs.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AFEY5NCQ84NIY
• What You Don't Know . . . Is Vast (and Statist)! 19 November, 2008
Thomas J. DiLorenzo has written a truly riveting work of history. Most historians write dull and droning narratives, but DiLorenzo is among the small and precious group that writes well.
The subtitle of the book is "What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe." That subtitle is the give-away for the contents of the book.
(1) You're not supposed to know that Lincoln was a dictator during the Civil War;
(2) You're not supposed to know that he hated the Jeffersonian idea of states' rights and limited government;
(3) You're not supposed to know that he was a rich trial attorney who favored corporations, particularly the railroad industry;
(4) You're not supposed to know that the entire Civil War was judged by the Supreme Court after 1865 as unconstitutional and that Lincoln, in his suspension of habeus corpus, was judged by the Supreme Court as acting against the Constitution of the United States;
(5) You're not supposed to know that his anti-slavery campaigns had nothing to do with his wanting to end slavery or with the plight of the African-American;
(6) You're not supposed to know that Lincoln wanted a white America, particularly for the West, and that he made attempts to ship African-Americans off to Africa and Liberia, specifically.
(7) You're not supposed to know that the real split between the North and the South was over tariffs, and that it was high tariffs (or taxes) that created the Civil War;
(8) You're not supposed to know that when the end of the Civil War arrived, the Jeffersonian ideal of states' rights ended and the Hamiltonian notion of a totalitarian central government was made king of the land, a notion which vehemently reigns over the citzenry today; and
You're not supposed to know that the so-called "greatest President in American history" was an early and American version of Stalin.
This book leaves the reader wanting to know more.
It is part of DiLorenzo's genius as a historian, teacher and guide that he foresees this hunger. In the Appendix, the author provides a variety of historians who have written books on all the topics raised in the previous chapters so that when the book ends, the unmasking of the truth about America's past can continue.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3NK6P0QFDUZL2
• Lincoln Exposed 29 November, 2008
I heard about this book on "Pro Business With Dr. Mike Beitler," an internet-radio show about free-market capitalism. DiLorenzo exposes Lincoln as the statist empire-builder he was. Lincoln didn't care about individual rights, free markets, or America as the Founding Fathers invisioned.
David Jacobs
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1OR7LILIDZ2X4
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