The Real Lincoln

0:00The dozens of Northern newspaper editorials in 1860 and early 1861 who said just that, that it just makes a mockery of the idea of a genuine union of states if some of them are held as subject provinces at the barrel of a gun. It's no union, you've destroyed the union. So he saved the union geographically, but he destroyed it philosophically, which is This is what counts, in my view. He saved the Constitution. You read this everywhere. He saved the Constitution. I argue in the book that he did permanent and irreparable damage to the Constitution. And another thing I point out in the book is that left-wing scholars are now admitting this.

0:47It's very interesting. In the early days, 50 or 60 years ago, historians like James Randall would make excuses. They would look at how Lincoln trashed the constitutional liberty during the war and they would make excuses for it. He was forced into it, the suspension of habeas corpus didn't last forever, on and on and on, excuse after excuse. But now there are historians such as Gary Wills, or he's not a historian, he's a journalist, and George P. Fletcher, who's a law professor at Columbia, who are now saying, well yes, Lincoln did all these things, But it's a good thing that he did, because otherwise we may never have been able to adopt egalitarianism in America. That is, the subtitle of Fletcher's book is Our Secret Constitution.

1:36And he makes the argument that, thanks to Lincoln, we subverted and essentially destroyed the real Constitution, and in its place, through hundreds of legal precedents, have created de facto a new Constitution that replaces individual liberty as the purpose of government in its place says Fletcher, egalitarianism, nationalism and democracy, socialism in other words, a pretty good definition of socialism. So the leftist historians are now, they're not even trying to make excuses for Lincoln's trashing of the Constitution, they're saying the ends justify the means now. Let me give you some examples of what I mean by this, trashing the Constitution. And some of you who have read some of my articles and things are familiar with this.

2:25He invaded the southern states without consulting Congress, that's unconstitutional. Declared martial law, that's unconstitutional. Blockaded southern ports without declaring war, that's unconstitutional. Suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Everybody at the time said only Congress could do that legally. He imprisoned without trial some 13 northern citizens, arrested and imprisoned newspaper publishers who were critical of him, censored all telegraph communications, nationalized the railroads, created three new states, Kansas, Nevada and West Virginia, without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to rig the 1864 elections and give himself more electoral votes. He had soldiers interfere with elections in the North. They used colored ballots, like a blue ballot was Republican, a red ballot was a Democrat, and if you saw someone of the wrong color, the soldiers would not let them vote in city after city.

3:26Even David Donald, who is probably the preeminent Lincoln scholar of the day, from Harvard, said, I quote him as saying, With the help of federal bayonets, Lincoln won New York State by 7,000 votes in 1864. So this is not a secret, this is not something that I've dug up, this has been well known for a long time, that they literally used bayonets, soldiers of bayonets, to rig the northern elections. And Clinton Rossiter, who was a very worshipful historian of Lincoln, said this about all this, he said, This amazing disregard for the Constitution was considered by nobody as legal, end quote. And that was what Clinton Rossiter. And the most outrageous thing here was Clement Volandegam of Ohio, a congressman from Ohio, who was the big thorn in Lincoln's side, he had him deported.

4:21Yeah, deported. And he ended up in Canada. And why did he have him deported? Well, reading some of Volandegam's speeches is, to me, was thrilling. It was like reading Thomas Jefferson's political speeches. He was a real Jeffersonian, a real classical liberal, and I recommend Clement Volandegam to anybody. But just some of the things he said, the thing that I think was the straw that broke the camel's back This was a speech in the floor of the House of Representatives where he was criticized, all these obstructions of the Constitution that I just mentioned. Bill Andigam was criticizing Lincoln for this. He wasn't saying, I'm a secessionist. He wasn't saying anything of the sort.

5:15He was saying, if you want to arrest somebody for treason, do it through the civil law process. Don't have federal soldiers without a warrant break somebody's front door down like they did to Bill Andigam. They broke his door down in Dayton, Ohio in the middle of the night, dragged him off to military prison. No warrants, never arrested or anything, and that happened to 13,000 people. Here's what Delanigan said. He complained about the quartering of soldiers in private homes without the consent of the owners. This is in the North, and without any manner having been prescribed by law to the subversion, in part at least, of Maryland, of our own state government and of the authorities under it, to the censorship of the telegraph, the infringement repeatedly in one or more of the states of the right of the people to keep and bear arms.

6:01They went around taking arms away from people for their defense, for free speech too has been repeatedly denied. And then here's the thing, in my opinion, I make this case in the book, the thing that really got Volandegam in trouble, where he really let the cat out of the bag, where he described the real Lincoln on the floor of the House of Representatives. And in my opinion, Lincoln could not tolerate this. He took the mask off, he unmasked them. He said the real purpose of these acts was national banks, bankrupt laws, a vast and permanent public debt, high tariffs, heavy direct taxation, enormous expenditure, gigantic and stupendous peculation and strong government, no more state lines, no more state governments and a consolidated monarchy or vast centralized military despotism.

6:54That's what the land again was a quoting Lincoln of doing. Of course, he did every one of these things. Nothing here was false. Every single one of these things happened, and so he was deported after that.

7:10Harry Jaffa, another fantasy Lincoln thing I'll mention, Harry Jaffa wrote an article about Lincoln's culture of life, he called it. Culture of life. I write about Lincoln's culture of death in the book. Some 50,000 southern civilians were killed by the Federal Army. One out of four southern white men between 20 and 40 years of age were killed. Randolph Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi were burned to the ground, as was Atlanta. When Atlanta was burned, 90% of the structures were burned to the ground. And then after they were all burned out, winter was coming on, Sherman ordered the remaining residents to evict them from their homes. Just imagine if Stonewall Jackson had burned Philadelphia to a smoldering ruin and there were 2,000 people left and it was February in Pennsylvania and he evicted them from their homes and the countryside had no food in it.

8:04That's what Sherman did. Historians would still be writing this as one of the great war crimes in all of history, but it's a glorious achievement now. Honest Abe, that's a fantasy Lincoln. My Lincoln, the real Lincoln, is a spectacular liar. One of the interpretations I give of secession, the whole issue of secession, was no one really questioned the right of secession until about the 1840s, the 1830s actually, when Daniel Webster, the leader of the Whig Party, which was Lincoln's party, decided to rewrite history. And I mentioned in the book, it reminds me of how the communists rewrote their history to gain power.

8:50And the history that Daniel Webster rewrote was that the federal government created the states. And that is just totally backwards. It's very clear. I can't see how anybody could make that argument. But it was the states in their political conventions that created the federal government as their agent. and no one questioned this at all, but Webster came up with this theory and Lincoln latched on to it. And that turned into Lincoln's rationale for the war and for why he argued as a trial lawyer that the states had no right to secede because the federal government in his view was not the creature of the states, even though several states as a condition of ratifying the Constitution explicitly reserved the right to withdraw at any time they thought their rights were are being violated. Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island did that. It's very clear that they did that. You can look up, Tocqueville very clearly said this when he was commenting on the issue of states' rights. So did Alexander Hamilton for that matter, the big centralizer.

10:00But Lincoln, I borrow the phrase from Don Livingston that this was Lincoln's spectacular lie. It was not just a lie, but it was a spectacular lie. It was breathtaking in its audacity, but that's the lie that was told. Lincoln is called the great reconciliator. He used beautiful language about binding the nation's wounds during Reconstruction. You've all heard that, binding the nation's wounds. I argue that the party of Lincoln poured salt into the nation's wounds for 12 more years after the war was over because of what they did during Reconstruction, where they disenfranchised white males and enfranchised all the ex-slaves as quickly as they could and voted in tax increase after tax increase after tax increase and heavy debt in the southern states for railroad building again, things like that, and very little came of it in terms of public benefit in the southern states, so I have a chapter on Reconstruction too.

11:02I hope you get an idea of how I came as an economist to this because I thought mercantilism essentially was what Lincoln was all about. There was always a group of men in America who wanted mercantilism. Lincoln, in my view, was the political son of Alexander Hamilton. Alexander Hamilton fought for a highly centralized government, but for what? Central planning of the economy, high taxes, high public debt, corporate welfare. That's what it's for. You needed a centralized government for that. The Whigs battled for this for decades and never had any success until Lincoln came along.

11:49They ended the debate in 1861 and won the debate by force of arms. They got their way by force and coercion rather than argumentation. And the final thing I'll say, my time is about up, is some of the great classical liberals or libertarians of the day understood the real meaning of what happened here, what was happening. And some of you, many of you have probably read this, even I've quoted it in a few places. But Lord Acton, the great historian of liberty, and Social Liberty had a correspondence with Robert E. Lee and in November 4th, 1866 he wrote to General Lee and said this, I saw in states' rights the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will and secession filled me with hope, not as a destruction but as a redemption of democracy.

12:41The institutions of your republic have not exercised on the old world the salutary and liberating influence I believe that the example of that great reform, the Confederate Constitution, would have blessed all the races of mankind by establishing true freedom purged of the native dangers and disorders of the republics, therefore I deem that you were fighting the battles of our liberty, our progress and our civilization, and I mourn for the stake which was lost at war. at Richmond, More Deeply Than I Rejoice Over That Which Was Saved at Waterloo." And that was the great Lord Acton commenting there.

13:28And so just the opposite of the story you hear nowadays, that Lincoln saved government for the people, by the people, of the people, and he destroyed that. And I make the argument in the last chapter that this was a turning point in American and History, where the American citizens went from being the masters to being the servants of government at this point. And finally, Lysander Spooner, the great libertarian legal scholar and philosopher, who in the 1840s, he was a prominent abolitionist in New England, he was from Massachusetts, and his whole family had been abolitionists. He had written a defense or an attack on the fugitive slave law. He wrote a book on jury nullification as a handbook for lawyers in the northern states to use whenever a runaway slave was brought before trial to be used to make the argument to give the slave his freedom. And so Lysander Spooner was a famous abolitionist and he was a brilliant legal scholar. But five years after the war was over, in fact the Massachusetts

14:35bar gave him the highest awards it could give anyone because of his writings on legal strategy to Deal with Runaway Slaves. But five years after the war was over, this is what Spooner wrote. He said, all of these cries of having abolished slavery, of having saved the country, of having preserved the Union, of establishing a government of consent, and of maintaining the national honor are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats, so transparent that they ought to deceive no one, end quote. But of course, the victors always write the history, so that's why for 135 years now, Americans have been taught about the fantasy Lincoln, but now I'm going to set everyone straight with my book on the real Lincoln.

15:20And it's available for sale wherever books are sold next week or on Amazon.com on the computer downstairs today. and then my time is up. Laissez-faire books, it's on the cover of the Laissez-faire book catalog this month and they didn't give me a centerfold, I asked for a centerfold, but it's on the cover of Laissez-faire books. Yeah, you can buy it from them. I'm going to hope to do that. I was telling Hans at lunch that I was on the Bill O'Reilly show a couple of years ago for my book Food and Drink Police. I'm hoping to get on there again because he's sort of a big dunce, but he has a big audience. He has a big audience This is going to be my question. Bill O'Reilly was around when Abraham Lincoln was around.

16:23Did he be able to get the true idea of Abraham Lincoln's thoughts out, or was it much more subtle so that he would be able to take more than a spin zone?

16:39The mayor of New York, Fernando Wood, proposed having New York City secede from the state of New York and the United States. He wanted it to be what he called a free city because they were free traders. They relied on international commerce and they did a lot of trade with the South. And so there was a very strong pro-secession movement in New York City especially. and the Journal of Commerce and a number of other papers in New York City were very skeptical of Lincoln and so Lincoln literally had his army go in there and arrest the editors and the owners and put them in prison in Fort Lafayette in New York Harbor and there were federal troops that went around destroying the printing presses. They literally destroyed the printing presses.

17:25Other places in the country, they denied them the use of the mails Because in those days newspapers were all delivered by mail, and so almost all, and so there was one newspaper owner in particular who was critical, like Volandegam was, not urging secession or anything like that, but urging, let's negotiate peace, let's try to negotiate peace, or let's not have the income tax, or let's not have military conscription, let's debate this. They denied them the use of the mail, the one newspaper owner then hired private couriers, which I think was probably the first The first paper boys ever in America, but at that point, Lincoln sent the army in and shut them down altogether, because they got around his regulation. And so there were dozens, probably hundreds of newspapers that literally the owners and editors were put into prison, and the writ of habeas corpus had been suspended by Lincoln unilaterally without Congress.

18:20Congress eventually got around to Robert Stamping it, and so there was no warrant. No one ever arrested them or charged them with anything. They just put them in prison for a while and that of course sent the message to every other newspaper in America that you don't criticize Abraham Lincoln for fear of being thrown in prison. And so I think that had that effect. And so Bill O'Reilly, he would have been a stooge like the rest of them were in the Northern press, I think. Either that or he would have been in prison. So if I go on a show, I'll ask him that question. I'll give him these facts. Yes, sir? Is it your perception that the talk would have been better off if Lincoln survived or would have been dead?

19:11Well, that's tough to say. And most people will say, well, of course, if he'd have survived, there would have been as much revenge. But Lincoln was a consummate politician his whole political life. Murray Rothbard once said to call him a consummate politician means he was a consummate liar, conniver and manipulator. That's what he was. And what happened after his assassination during so-called reconstruction was the Republican Party had a monopoly for 30 years, essentially. You know, they essentially controlled things until Franklin Roosevelt was elected, really, in terms of policy. But for the next 20 or 30 years, I quote the historian Richard Benzell as saying, the only other example he can think of any political party that had that kind of power were the Bolsheviks in Russia.

20:05You know, as far as, you know, just pure monopoly power in politics. And Lincoln being such a consummate politician, I think he would have gleefully exercised that power. He once said, I quote him in my book as saying, his plan for governing the South after the war was to have a 10% minority who were faithful to the Union to govern the rest. That was his idea of democracy. So all the talk about Lincoln saving democracy and the consent of the governed, he explicitly said, If we can find 10% of southerners who are loyal to me, to the federal government, we'll make them all the governors and the senators and the congressmen and the state legislators and we'll have them rule the other 90%.

20:50That was Lincoln's definition of democracy, his own words, and so it may well have been worse, I don't know, but it was bad enough, there was a lot of revenge that was gotten after his death, But it might have been even worse had he still been in charge, I think. Because I don't believe the business about how he was such a gentle soul and wanted to reconcile the country after... One thing I'll mention, one of the things that is really spooky about reading Lincoln's speeches is if you connect these things, Frank Taussig, the great historian of tariff history, said that in 1857, the average tariff rate in America was 15%, one-five, what Towslick says.

21:37It's tricky to compute average tariff rates sometimes, but that's what he said. He said it was the lowest tariff rate of anywhere in the 19th century. The Republicans come in and they propose making the average tariff rate 47%, pretty much tripling the tariff rate. At the time, Southerners were paying about 80% of all tariff revenues, so they're already paying 80%, and here comes Lincoln and the Republicans saying, we're going to triple the rate that you're paying. And then, in his first inaugural address, he says, in his first inaugural address, I don't want to look for it, take too much time, but he, that one of my duties is to collect the tariff revenues, and save for that, there will be no invasion of any state.

22:25That's a lawyer's way of saying, if you don't collect this triple tax rate, I'm going to invade. That's what he said in the first inaugural. So what were the Southerners to think? They're already being plundered, paying 80% of all federal taxes. The Republicans are in. It's a sectional party only from the north. We're going to triple the amount of plunder. And then they have Lincoln there saying, and if you don't pay, we're going to shoot. The South Carolinians in 1828 nullified the tariff of abominations. I think it's a great biography. One measure of how great it is, is I looked through a lot of the Lincoln literature for references to it, and wherever I did find a reference to it, I would find a distinguished historian saying, well, there's a lot of references to it.

23:24This guy, Edgar Lee Masters, who wrote this book on Lincoln, but it's not a serious book and you shouldn't read it, and so, to me, that's a sign that it's a great book. Oh yes, I know it has been reprinted by your foundation, I think. I own a copy. Well, let me quote Edgar Lee Masters. I would recommend the book, the Edgar Lee Masters, to anyone. The New Biography of Masters is out, and Professor Russell at the John M. C. Logan College in Southern Illinois, he wrote the New Introduction to the Biography. He mentions the Master of Writing and Biography.

24:10He doesn't mention the borrowing, he doesn't mention the fact that he wrote the new introduction, and so it comes in, you know, it's an own book.

24:40out of the country, and he wrote, this book is very well researched, and I've looked around also at the mainstream historians, what have they said about LaRone Bennett Jr., the man's name, it's a non-book, even Gabor Borat has a whole chapter on colonization in his latest book, and he does not cite LaRone Bennett Jr., even though he smears LaRone Bennett Jr. in the text, but he does not footnote it so that you can tell the title of his book. That's how they operate. He was Clarence Darrow's law partner. He was the author of the Spoon River Anthology, a famous playwright. I think it's still playing on Broadway, Spoon River Anthology. But he understood Lincoln very well, and he gave me a lot of clues. One of my themes is Lincoln was a mercantilist. That's what motivated him. He wanted to be the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois.

25:35I remember reading that too. But Masters, Lincoln said over and over and over again, Henry Clay was his role model. He said over and over and over again, that's Henry Clay. And here's one minute. This will be the last thing I'll say and then we'll take a break. But maybe my watch stopped. It's still going. I wear a Swiss Army watch because there's no such thing as a Swiss Army, by the way. They don't have an army in Switzerland. Everyone's required to own a machine gun, but there's no army. It's what Edgar Lee Masters said about Henry Clay, who Lincoln was his idol. He said, Henry Clay was a champion of that political system, which doles favors to the strong in order to win and to keep their adherence to the government.

26:22His system offered shelter to devious schemes and corrupt enterprises. He was the beloved son of Alexander Hamilton, figuratively speaking, with his corrupt funding schemes, his superstitions concerning the advantage of a public debt, and a people taxed to make profits for enterprises that cannot stand alone. His example and his doctrines led to the creation of a party, the Whig Party, that had no platform to announce because its principles were plunder and nothing else. End quote. And that could have been said about Abraham Lincoln as well. That's all we have time for, I guess.