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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.
Product Details
| Publisher | Three Rivers Press |
| ISBN | 0307338428 |
| Features |
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| Format | Paperback |
| Author | Thomas DiLorenzo |
| EAN | 9780307338426 |
| Label | Three Rivers Press |
| Dewey Decimal Number | 973.7092 |
| Studio | Three Rivers Press |
| Number Of Pages | 224 |
| Title | Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe |
| Release Date | 2007-11-27 |
| Publication Date | 2007-11-27 |
| Manufacturer | Three Rivers Press |
Customer Reviews
Libertarianism UnmaskedReview by David K, 2010-06-27
Lincoln Unmasked should really have been titled "Libertarianism Unmasked. It is really just a transparent state's rights libertarian manifesto, with Lincoln only used as an occasional foil for the author's ideological rantings. It is thankfully short - 175 pages of text, with small format pages and large typeset, into which the author crams 19 chapters. Most of the chapters are necessarily short, and many appear to have been written in a single stream-of-consciousness sitting (perhaps as brief as an hour for a couple of chapters). Some chapters barely even mention Lincoln. To critique its shortcomings would necessarily take more length than the book itself. Suffice to say, the author chooses to cherry pick factoids, many of which he either doesn't understand or chooses not to understand, and twists his thesis around them for the desired effect. Where he does raise legitimate points, he presents them as if they were somehow "hidden" by "Lincoln cultists," when in truth they are well known to anyone who has more than a passing understanding of Lincoln.
The author, whom I met when he inscribed his first book to me, spends his time in this follow up book doing nothing but ranting and raising straw men to pull down. As an act of scholarship, this book ranks at the level of a high school middling student's senior paper, one perhaps written largely the night before it was due. Some sections are actually more like 8th grade scholarship in their lack of support for the ideological screed presented. The lack of scholastic integrity with respect to his topic is embarrassing for a published author. I have no compunction saying that this book should be ignored, as the reader can find any number of books that address the real issues about Lincoln, and all of them will do a much better job.
"honest abe"
Review by Merry K. Smith, 2010-05-21
This book shows how history has been "rewritten" to be politically correct. We were all taught that Lincoln was a really great guy when in truth he was a complete despot.
Revealing Book on Dishonest Abe
Review by Tonja B. Carter, 2010-04-22
This is without a doubt one of the greatest Lincoln books on the market. It offers comprehensive information on misunderstandings, technicalities, and downright lies.
It is divided into 3 segments.
-Things you don't know about Lincoln
-Economic issues you don't know concerning Lincoln
-Politics of Lincoln's "Gatekeepers"
I highly recommend this to any person who wishes to know fact, not fiction, in history.
"Big Government" Unmasked
Review by Joshua Felipe, 2010-04-10
A central claim of this book, and of many of the reviewers on this page, is that Lincoln was a racist who did not really care about ending slavery. And of course that claim alone, if it is true, must radically alter our view of him.
I am aware that plenty of people find this claim quite plausible, and I don't mean to be disrespectful -- but seriously, it's totally absurd.
I have just finished reading the whole of Lincoln's letters and speeches -- the unabridged version. Those make it abundantly clear -- pretty much from beginning to end -- that Lincoln was a lifelong opponent of slavery; that he saw its existence as a powerful long-term threat to the whole idea of democracy and free government; that he very strongly and passionately believed in democracy and free government and therefore wanted to see that long-term threat thwarted; that he saw slavery as a form of tyranny, and as such as something that would surely lead to wider forms of tyranny; that though he was not a radical, John Brown abolitionist (because slavery was legal, and constitutionally protected in the south) he was passionately opposed to the expansion of slavery because (as he repeatedly explains) he felt that slavery would eventually die out just as long as it was contained.
[Incidentally, I think he was right about this. If slavery had expanded, and been strengthened by having a whole nation based on it, there is very good reason to think it would never have died out. When people point to the fact that it died out elsewhere, without war, by about 1900, they make two mistakes: (1) They forget that it died out in that way in a world in which Lincoln had won the civil war and no slave confederacy had arisen in America and exerted its influence on the world. Its influence would have been massive, and the world would have been totally different. (2) They state a falsehood. Forms of slavery (e.g., in Nazi Germany, and the countries the Nazis occupied) or virtual slavery (e.g., apartheid, or the domestic enslavement of women) existed long after 1900, and in many places slavery still exists. And if it could exist in, say, Poland in 1943, why not in Alabama in 1987?]
All the views of Lincoln's that I mentioned above are absolutely unequivocal in his writings. They are all very well articulated. They are persuasive. He reveals them and discusses them over and over and over again, with perfect consistency, in both public speeches and endless private letters. If you don't believe that he held these views then for goodness sake just GO AND READ THE SPEECHES. READ THE LETTERS. READ THEM. Why is there any debate about the man's views when he left hundreds and hundreds of pages of writings expressing them with perfect clarity? How does this book manage to argue for a thesis that is SO easily demonstrated to be UTTERLY absurd by even a quick examination of the contemporary written evidence??? Answer, by flat IGNORING that evidence; by outrageous selective quotations; by assuming that readers are just too stupid, lazy, or backward to be able to go to a library and read what Lincoln himself said about his own views, aims, and motives. And by explaining away the fact that so many people have a positive view of Lincoln by setting out an absurd conspiracy theory. "Everyone has been lying to you about Lincoln" Nonsense! The standard view is NOT based on deceitful history teachers or sinister government agents. It's just based on the speeches and letters of the man himself. READ THEM.
Lincoln for most of life did not believe in the complete equality or sameness of the races; for that reason he often says that he is not in favor of full social and political equality, and often suggests that the fairest solution of the slavery problem would be if the two races could somehow separate. This is all true. It is also perfectly consistent with his very strong belief that the races are equal ENOUGH to make slavery an unequivocal moral evil. "A black woman may not be my equal in every respect; but in her right to keep the bread that she earns by the sweat of her own brow she certainly is my equal, and the equal of every other man." In fact Lincoln's favorite political text is the Declaration of Independence and his favorite political principle, that "All men are created equal". (He says this at least a hundred times. Whole sections of the Lincoln-Douglas debates are fought over this issue of the wider implications of the equality clause in the Declaration of Independence ). Perhaps not equal in every way (he says) but certainly equal in their right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their own happiness according to their own wishes and efforts - exactly as the declaration stipulates. He repeatedly and convincingly applies this to the slavery issue, as do his opponents, who, in defense of slavery have to DENY that the Declaration ever applied to black people, or in some cases denounce it and reject it altogether. He repeatedly states that this new experiment, free government, was all about casting off the old idea of permanently fixed stations in life and giving everyone -- including the people then enslaved -- a fair and equal chance in life, and that slavery, of course, was essentially founded on the exact opposite idea.
His famous "House Divided" idea, by the way, was not just about the two sections of the country. It was also about the clash of these two profoundly different principles or ideals: one, that people are equal, and should be left to lead their own lives as they see fit, and are capable of self-government, without kings, tyrants, aristocracies, or masters; two, that people are NOT equal, and that some people need masters. And if some people need masters, then why not others? Why not just go the whole hog and bring back kings and full scale tyranny? (That's how his argument goes, in the thirty odd times he articulates it.)
So, true, Lincoln did not believe in the perfect sameness of the races. But to cite that fact, and not these several others, grossly misrepresents his views, and the fight he was fighting. Also, it is worth remembering that his views changed. By the end of his life he was in favor of giving black people the vote, starting with the ones who had fought for the union -- making him, at that point, more committed to full political equality than most southerners would be until the 1960's.
It's only against the background of these views that you can understand why Lincoln, from the start, was against secession. Secession meant the expansion of slavery (he thought); it meant the enshrinement, in a form of government, of the principles of slavery (he thought); it meant the glorification of inequality, and tyranny, and the failure of free government and the democratic experiment (he thought). (Don't believe me? Please don't take my word for it. Just go and READ THE SPEECHES AND LETTERS. You'll find him saying these things again and again and again and again.)
When the confederacy wrote their new constitution, they erased the "all men are created equal" clause from the Declaration, and replaced it with a commitment to human INequality. They erased Lincoln's favorite political motto; the cherished ideal that half of his speeches go on and on and on about. So really, is it so hard to believe that he opposed secession, at least in part, BECAUSE he saw it as representing the failure of those ideals (exactly as he claimed)?
But let's hear Jefferson Davis talking about this himself:
Here is Davis talking to William Seward in the United States senate in 1859:
"There is nothing which has led men to greater confusion of ideas than this term of "free States" and "slave States;" and I trusted that the Senator, with his discriminating and logical mind, was going to give us something tangible, instead of dealing in a phrase never applicable. He applied another; but what was his phrase? "Capital States" and "labor States." And where is the State in which nobody labors? The fallacy upon which the Senator hung adjective after adjective was that all the labor of the southern States was performed by negroes. Did he not know that the negroes formed but a small part of the people of the southern States? Did he suppose nobody labored but a negro, there? If so, he was less informed than I had previously believe him to be. Negro slavery exists in the South, and by the existence of negro slavery, the white man is raised to the dignity of a free man and an equal. Nowhere else will you find every white man superior to menial service. Nowhere else will you find every white man recognized so far as an equal as never to be excluded from any man's house or any man's table. Your own menial servant [in the North] who blacks your boots, drives your carriage, who wears your livery, and is your own in every sense of the word, is NOT your equal; and such is any society wherever negro slavery is not the substratum on which the white race is elevated to its true dignity. We, however, have no theory to press upon you; we leave you to such institutions as you may prefer; but when you assail ours, we come to the vindication of our institutions by showing you that all your phrases are false; that we are the free men. With us, and with us alone, as I believe, the white man attains to his true dignity in the Government.
...
The condition of slavery with us is, in a word, nothing but the form of civil government instituted for a class of people not fit to govern themselves. It is exactly what in every State exists in some form or other. It is just that kind of control which is extended in every northern State over its convicts, its lunatics, its minors, its apprentices. It is but a form of civil government for those who by their nature are not fit to govern themselves. We recognize the fact of the inferiority stamped upon that race of men by the Creator, and from the cradle to the grave, our Government, as a civil institution, marks that inferiority. In their subject and dependent state, they are not the objects of cruelty as they would be if left to the commission of crime, for which they should be incarcerated in penitentiaries and work-houses, and put under hired overseers, having no interest in them and no relation to them, no affiliation, growing out of the associations of childhood and the tender care of age. Is there nothing of the balm needed in the Senator's own State, that he must needs go abroad to seek objects for his charity and philanthropy? What will he say to the throngs of beggars who crowd the streets of his great commercial emporium? What will he say to the multitudes collected in the penitentiaries and prisons of his own State?"
Davis makes himself very plain here, and shows with perfect clarity the driving force behind secession.
He believed and here clearly states that all black people are "not fit to govern themselves"; that they should by rights be treated in the same way as criminals, children and lunatics; and that that central fact is enshrined in the state constitutions of the south, as it would later become the central, foundational principle of the confederacy.
This shows us how entirely wrongheaded people are to think that Davis or the other secessionists was ever, in any way whatsoever, an opponent of "big government". In reality, Davis firmly believed in imposing HUGE, indeed INFINITELY LARGE government on about three million of the people who lived in the south. He believed that, for those people, government imposed and exercised by others should be total, absolute, and unrelenting; that it should control every single moment of their lives; every minute of their day; that it should tell them where to go, what to wear, where to sleep, when to work, when to eat, what to eat, when to speak, when to be silent, and when to roll over and die -- and that it should have the permanent right to steal the "bread that they earn by the sweat of their own brow."
This is probably the BIGGEST form of government that human beings have ever invented in the whole of history. Davis is manifestly its very avid supporter. Lincoln was manifestly against it.
So let there be no more of this utter nonsense about secession having anything whatsoever to do with opposing big government. The south seceded to make sure that Lincoln or other people with his crazy idea of human equality would never be able to diminish the complete and total and HUGE government exercised by whites in the south over the people "not fit to govern themselves."
Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe
Review by Zoni, 2010-04-10
Lincoln Unmasked tells it like it was. Wars have nothing to do with morality and everything to do with power and money. Lincoln was a cruel dictator who set the tone for future U.S. dictatorships. The blood that was shed in the Civil War is on his hands. Lincoln should have been tried as a war criminal. This book is one that I would give as a gift to others; this book is an eye opener. Unfortunately, the U.S. government run schools are serving up the "Kool Aid" of an Abe Lincoln who was the "great emancipator." As they do with other bloody tyrants, they should go to the Lincoln Memorial and pull that statue down.
My suggestion is that one gets a copy of this book, before it is banned!
Again, a great book. You will read it and then get angry over the lies that you, your family and friends were taught by the public school system.
The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War
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