New Book by Dr. DiLorenzo: The Problem with Lincoln

Interesting. The author bio mentions he is from the Mises Institute. Might have to check it out.

This might be interesting. I'm curious as to how much in historical writings and any contemporary accounts he cites as opposed to speculation.

I have a copy on my shelf and loan it out often enough that I had to buy extra copies in case it goes out of print.

quote:

---

Lincoln’s greatest failure: not ending slavery peacefully, as the rest of the world managed to do

---

Even the aristocrats of Latin America, not known for human rights tendencies, ended slavery peacefully. They found that having responsibility for slaves all year when the need for labor was seasonal simply did not compete with free labor that was paid only when they worked.

also read WHEN LINCOLN TAKES COMMAND by Tilley

quote:

---

you're wasting your breath, most conservatives I know refuse to look at all the facts surrounding Lincoln and the Civil War.

---

Lincolns admirers have always had kind of a religious cult aspect to them. Look at Carl Sandberg. He's books were basically The Church of Lincoln (he saw Lincoln as foreshadowing a glorious Socialist revolution).

I listened to a debate between DiLorenzo and Harry Jaffa, a "conservative" Lincoln superfan. DiLorenzo did his best to be friendly, but Jaffa was just apoplectic that anyone could question his beloved Abe. He kept getting angry and attacking DiLorenzo in a HOW DARE YOU tone.

quote:

---

He's a full of it. Out of context quotes, missing citations, etc. Trying to make a quick buck by presenting "alternative" history LINK /

---

That is called rustled jimmies. Some people hate when their patron saint, St. Lincoln is criticized.

quote:

---

He absolutely preserved the Union.

---

This is one of the most infuriating arguments about the Civil War to me. The Union was never in danger of dissolving. It was just going to shrink for awhile with fewer states. It's not like if the South succeeded, then suddenly Ohio and Michigan and Maine were gonna go "Whelp, that's it, there's no more Union, better join Canada".

The bitch of it is, with westward expansion, the Union would have grown again. It's not like Southern Independence would have been a death knell. That's crap. What it came down to was not the Union being in danger of dissolving, but America not getting it's shot at being an empire. I've come to see that's what it was about: manifest destiny meant that America was to be the new Rome, and empires don't shrink. They only grow. Thus, the South had to be brought to heel.

This Country will have to Balkanize or it will Implode.

quote:

---

Technology was moving in and would have replaced slavery. It's happened in western Europe and many parts of South America. There is no reason it couldn't have happened in the south. Lincoln could have sped that process up with economic inducements instead of war.

---

Sharecropping was necessary long after the war. Heck, even now we have illegals working for pocket lint. As I said, Lincoln offered slaveholders of Delaware a compensated emancipation and they declined. No way the black belt slave barons would've considered it. They could've just accepted Lincoln's proposal of allowing slavery to continue to exist but banning its expansion, but they were so used to getting their way that they pushed their luck too far. Pride comes before the fall