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Abraham Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consummate StatesmanAmerican History | Single Page | 6 comments | Print This Post | Email This Post Most Americans — including most historians — regard Abraham Lincoln as the nation's greatest president. But in recent years powerful movements have gathered, both on the political right and the left, to condemn Lincoln as a flawed and even wicked man. Subscribe Today
For both camps, the debunking of Lincoln usually begins with an exposé of the 'Lincoln myth,' which is well described in William Lee Miller's 2002 book Lincoln's Virtues: An Ethical Biography. How odd it is, Miller writes, that an 'unschooled' politician 'from the raw frontier villages of Illinois and Indiana' could become such a great president. 'He was the myth made real,' Miller writes, 'rising from an actual Kentucky cabin made of actual Kentucky logs all the way to the actual White House.'
Lincoln's critics have done us all a service by showing that the actual author of the myth is Abraham Lincoln himself. It was Lincoln who, over the years, carefully crafted the public image of himself as Log Cabin Lincoln, Honest Abe and the rest of it. Asked to describe his early life, Lincoln answered, 'the short and simple annals of the poor,' referring to Thomas Gray's poem 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.' Lincoln disclaimed great aspirations for himself, noting that if people did not vote for him, he would return to obscurity, for he was, after all, used to disappointments.
These pieties, however, are inconsistent with what Lincoln's law partner, William Herndon, said about him: 'His ambition was a little engine that knew no rest.' Admittedly in the ancient world ambition was often viewed as a great vice. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, Brutus submits his reason for joining the conspiracy against Caesar: his fear that Caesar had grown too ambitious. But as founding father and future president James Madison noted in The Federalist, the American system was consciously designed to attract ambitious men. Such ambition was presumed natural to a politician and favorable to democracy as long as it sought personal distinction by promoting the public good through constitutional means.
What unites the right-wing and left-wing attacks on Lincoln, of course, is that they deny that Lincoln respected the law and that he was concerned with the welfare of all. The right-wing school — made up largely of Southerners and some libertarians — holds that Lincoln was a self-serving tyrant who rode roughshod over civil liberties, such as the right to habeas corpus. Lincoln is also accused of greatly expanding the size of the federal government. Some libertarians even charge — and this is not intended as a compliment — that Lincoln was the true founder of the welfare state. His right-wing critics say that despite his show of humility, Lincoln was a megalomaniacal man who was willing to destroy half the country to serve his Caesarian ambitions. In an influential essay, the late Melvin E. Bradford, an outspoken conservative, excoriated Lincoln as a moral fanatic who, determined to enforce his Manichaean vision — one that sees a cosmic struggle between good and evil — on the country as a whole, ended up corrupting American politics and thus left a 'lasting and terrible impact on the nation's destiny.'
Although Bradford viewed Lincoln as a kind of manic abolitionist, many in the right-wing camp deny that the slavery issue was central to the Civil War. Rather, they insist, the war was driven primarily by economic motives. Essentially, the industrial North wanted to destroy the economic base of the South. Historian Charles Adams, in When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession, published in 2000, contends that the causes leading up to the Civil War had virtually nothing to do with slavery.
This approach to rewriting history has been going on for more than a century. Alexander Stephens, former vice president of the Confederacy, published a two-volume history of the Civil War between 1868 and 1870 in which he hardly mentioned slavery, insisting that the war was an attempt to preserve constitutional government from the tyranny of the majority. But this is not what Stephens said in the great debates leading up to the war. In his 'Cornerstone' speech, delivered in Savannah, Ga., on March 21, 1861, at the same time that the South was in the process of seceding, Stephens said that the American Revolution had been based on a premise that was 'fundamentally wrong.' That premise was, as Stephens defined it, 'the assumption of equality of the races.' Stephens insisted that instead: 'Our new [Confederate] government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea. Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man. Slavery — subordination to the superior race — is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great and moral truth.' Pages: 1 2 3 4Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to
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6 Comments to “Abraham Lincoln: Tyrant, Hypocrite or Consummate Statesman”
You say Lincoln "never acknowledges black inferiority"…
Well… September 18, 1858…
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races – that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. I say upon this occasion I do not perceive that because the white man is to have the superior position the negro should be denied everything."
By Bubba on Feb 3, 2009 at 4:59 pm
"Of course the Southerners objected that they should not be forced to live under a regime that they considered tyrannical, but Lincoln countered that any decision to dissolve the original compact could only occur with the consent of all the parties involved. Once again, it makes no sense to have such agreements when any group can unilaterally withdraw from them and go its own way."
I believe the purpose of the U.S. Constitution was to unite groups of people (in their own various sovereign states) under the umbrella of a representative government. The States preceded the construction of the Union and have the right to leave said union, "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation."
By Terry on Feb 4, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Lincoln argued that the South had no right to secede — that the Southern states had entered the Union as the result of a permanent compact with the Northern states….Where was that written or agreed upon? Didn't Virginia have the option to secede before she joined the union? In a voluntary union a state should have the ability and right to leave that union if the citizens of that state so wish.
By Patricio Bridges on Aug 10, 2009 at 11:25 am
D'Souza's arrogant and dismissing claims that secession was unconstitutional flies in the face of easily verifiable reality: NY, RI and VA all joined the union on the condition of unilateral withdrawal should they find the new Constitution tyrannical; in Jefferson's First Inaugural, he invites discontented states to withdraw peacefully; the Hartford Convention of 1814 seriously contemplated secession for New England; and most obvious: if Lincoln was so valiantly defending the Constitution, willing to sacrifice untold lives, treasure and blood, you would think that the SPECIFIC CLAIM OF PERPETUAL UNION would be in writing, that the mechanics of secession would be well spelled out, like the Presidential Oath or the 10th Amendment. Instead, D'Souza merely uses his own self-suited logic, as did Lincoln, in formulating and espousing imagary constitutional principles that are not on paper but merely within a man's own head, heart and soul.
By Bob Bird on Sep 14, 2009 at 1:05 am
Your own final point contradicts your endorsement of Lincoln. You say, "He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced." Therein is the problem. Lincoln and every other president are obligated to be the greatest practitioner of the Constitution. Almost every president including Lincoln is a nationalist thug. Lincoln and his cabal hate the 10th Amendment.
Lincoln like Samuel Chase and other Constitution-haters twist and mangle the Constitution to advance their Statist policies. Would the original 13 colonies ratify a Constitution barring them from leaving the union? NO! Who knew the Constitition better? Jefferson or Lincoln?
In his First Inaugural Address, President Thomas Jefferson stated: "We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it." (Source: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jefinau1.asp)
President Jefferson later wrote to William H. Crawford in 1816: "If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation with the first alternative to a continuance in union without it, I have no hesitation in saying 'let us separate.' I would rather the States should withdraw which are for unlimited commerce and war, and confederate with those alone which are for peace and agriculture." (Source: http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1450.htm).
By Lin on Dec 7, 2009 at 11:37 am
The person that wrote this article has no idea what the Constitution of these United States is really about. Lincoln utterly torched the Constitution. I think the last comments by Lin hit the nail on the head. All Lincoln accomplished was handing more power to the federal government and removing power from the states. Totally anti-constitutional! Not to mention no other country ever had a civil war to end slavery, they were all able to abolish it without a war!
The guy that wrote this article states over and over the word "democracy". It was never set out to have a democracy in this country. It was designed to be a republic. "I pledge allegiance to the flag…. and to the REPUBLIC for which it stands…"
A democracy and a republic are two different things. Know your history.
If anyone cares to read it, the following article is an excellent and accurate portrayal of Lincoln – http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo138.html
My personal opinion of President Lincoln – I'm ashamed as an American that he was president of these United States as am I ashamed of most all of our presidents since.
Real presidents that are set apart, unique, courageous, bold, and heroic are George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson…
It is a shame how history is distorted, and our children today are taught fiction and myth as history.
The establishment today can't stand hearing about men like George Washington or Thomas Jefferson because our founders ideology shakes the very foundations of the corrupt federal government and geo-political spectrum of today. Our founders, those very men who persistently, battle after battle, fought the crown to ensure freedom, & the inception of our republic… if they were alive today, would instantly be in a war with our federal government.. live or die…come hell or high water… they'd be spilling blood.
It is better for our land to be drenched in blood than for us to become slaves to our own government. 1776 – George Washington
Now in a more present day concern.. consider the words below, and think of today.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs. – Thomas Jefferson
By Jeremy on Jan 8, 2010 at 4:22 pm