Lincoln Uncensored
To be sure, this was a mind-bending experience. I watched Steven Spielberg’s movie Lincoln on the same weekend that I read Joseph Fallon’s Lincoln Uncensored, the e-book of the week released by the Laissez Faire Club. Worlds collided.
Fallon’s book, which is brilliant and the most useful Lincoln book I’ve read, sticks to the facts by organizing material from the 10 volumes of collected writings and speeches of Lincoln. The reader is given Lincoln’s own words on subjects like slavery, secession, Fort Sumter, equality of blacks and Mexicans, habeas corpus, war power, free speech, tariffs, debt, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Union, and vastly more.
Fallon (educated at American University and Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs) is, obviously, a master researcher. His editorial notes take advantage of all modern scholarship and are carefully cited.
Lincoln emerges as the consummate politician, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. Political power was his driving principle. All else was malleable, words and rhetoric formulated as means to an end, and that end was centralization of the state. This is sadly true of his late-life sympathies to the abolitionist cause. They served his purposes well.
Fallon has added to each section some background discussion of the core issues. Just as an example, he assembles Lincoln’s pro-secession statements, such as:
“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better… Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.”
It’s a great statement, one that summarizes the classical liberal position for right of self-determination. Can this possibly be the same war president who ruled during the appalling bloodbath that killed 620,000 soldiers and perhaps another 100,000-plus civilians in order to prevent secession and shore up a forced union? Yes, it is. The year was 1848. He was speaking on behalf of the Texas secession from Mexico.
At the same time, Lincoln’s liberally minded words do not pertain to human rights generally. He did not oppose slavery in general. He was opposed to the extension of slavery for political reasons. By his own account, he “declared a thousand times” that that government cannot “rightfully interfere with slaves or slavery where it already exists.”
Reading Fallon’s book, the contrast between the liberating demigod of the civic religion and the undeniable reality, as illustrated through Lincoln’s own words, could not be more stark.
Then you see the movie and all the portrayed events take on a completely new meaning. Instead of a charming humanitarian, you see a clever politician drunk on power. Instead of a liberator, you see how the language of liberation was used to support despotism. Parts of the movie hint at the truth. He suppressed free speech. He assumed dictatorial powers without legal justification. He jailed critics. In the name of union, he turned the land of the free into killing fields.
Reading Fallon, two great problems with Abraham Lincoln emerge: his means and his ends. The means were themselves horrifying, and the new Lincoln movie provides only a hint of it with the piles of limbs and bodies that variously appear in battlefield and hospice scenes. This war was ghastly and unnecessary (Britain ended slavery peacefully just 30 years earlier, as Thomas DiLorenzo frequently points out). He ordered mass executions. He made the Bill of Rights a dead letter.
In order to understand Lincoln’s passion for preserving the Union, you have to put yourself into a different era of federal finance. There was but one source of revenue: the tariff. There were no internal taxes. There was no “too big to fail,” because there was no central bank capable of bailing out an entire industrial base. As Lincoln himself said by way of explanation, “The tariff is to the government what a meal is to the family” (1861). The South’s ports collected 75% of all federal tax revenue. Without that revenue — that’s what secession meant — the federal government would be starved.
So in one sense, Lincoln was doing only what we’ve come to expect of presidents. One only has to imagine how Bush or Obama or any modern American president would react to the prospect of a 75% cut in incoming revenue — especially if there were no central bank to make up the difference. Would any modern president let the people go, just stand by, and let the federal government starve? Let every opportunity for graft, payoffs, spending on projects, and patronage just evaporate? No chance.
The controversy has raged for a long time about whether the Civil War was really about slavery. It depends on the meaning of “about.” In terms of Lincoln’s motivation, the Fallon book makes it indisputably clear that it was not the desire to end slavery that drove Lincoln’s prosecution of the war, but the need for national unity, which in turn comes down to enforcing the revenue stream. Anyone who knows anything about how politics operates can see this very clearly. In fact, I don’t even know why this would be a controversial claim at all. Why does the head of any state put down rebellion? To liberate people or to enslave them?
As for the motivation of the South to secede, matters become more complex. The desire to shore up slavery and protect the territory from the abolitionists played a large and even decisive role, given that most everyone assumed that slavery was essential to the South. There was also the desire on the part of Southern elites to set up a new government that could form its own trading relationships with foreign nations. And though the demand for secession is an essential right of a free people, the new Confederate government drafted, taxed, and inflated in a way that contradicts every other principle of liberty.
The lesson here is that no government or power of any size or scale can be relied upon to defend liberty. And governments in wartime come into their own, stopping at nothing to protect their power at the people’s expense.
The movie ends with a sequence that is supposed to inspire, but only gave me chills. Thaddeus Stevens has his wife read him the text of the 13th Amendment. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States.” He breathes a great sigh of relief.
Slavery is gone, and thank God. But what about involuntary servitude? Ask the hundreds of thousands of people now locked up for nonviolent crimes like smoking pot. Ask those who are jailed for failing to fork over enough of their earnings to the government. Ask those who are jailed for sharing files online. Ask those who are jailed for creating alternative currencies or just trying to run a business but failing to adhere to every jot and tittle of the central plan.
In the film, Stevens believes liberty has won. Yet I’m sitting in a theater full of involuntary servants. Indeed, involuntary servitude is the very essence of government. It is the very means by which government seizes control of society. A real 13th Amendment, one that actually got rid of involuntary servitude, would guarantee freedom in every sense. That is not what happened. How and why should be a concern of every citizen interested in the fate of liberty.
No one book and certainly no one movie can possibly capture the incredible complexities of this astonishing event in American history. But it seems reasonable to start with Lincoln’s own words as presented in his letters and speeches. This requires carefully going through 10 volumes of his collected works. Lincoln Uncensored has done the work for you. It is this week’s free download in the Laissez Faire Club.
Regards,
Jeffrey Tucker
Stucky says:
I would like to start a petition to have Lincoln removed from Mount Rushmore.
That is all.
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29th November 2012 at 3:54 pm
Eddie says:
Or at least add some clay feet to his statue.
Lincoln would have had this blog eradicated from the intrahwebs and admin thrown in jail in Guantanamo.
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29th November 2012 at 4:19 pm
Administrator says:
Give Obama time. I’ll be disappeared at some point.
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29th November 2012 at 4:20 pm
Eddie says:
You might just be the “internal threat” to security they’ve been worried about. I’d get myself a Geiger counter to check for polonium if I were you.
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29th November 2012 at 4:26 pm
Stucky says:
“I presume you all know who I am. I am humble Abraham Lincoln. I’ve been solicited by many friends to become a candidate for the legislature. My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I’m in favor of a national bank…in favor of the internal improvements system and a high protective tariff.”
———-Abe Lincoln, 1832, when running for State Legislature
After being elected. Lincoln had a huge hand in a $10 million appropriation for road building, canal building, etc. The internal-improvement system had collapsed by 1837 with the result that Illinois was left with an enormous debt and empty treasury as described in a Chicago newspaper; “The gigantic and stupendous operations of the scheme dazzled the eyes of nearly everybody, but in the end it rolled up a debt so enormous as to impede the otherwise marvelous progress of Illinois.”
Nothing has changed. Isn’t Chicago and IL nearly bankrupt today? Hahaha We need a new amendment; Fuckwads from IL are not eligible to run for POTUS.
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29th November 2012 at 4:35 pm
ron says:
Taxs and money, more than slavery.The victors write history how they like it to be seen.
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29th November 2012 at 6:07 pm
sensetti says:
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29th November 2012 at 6:11 pm
SSS says:
“I would like to start a petition to have Lincoln removed from Mount Rushmore.”
—-Stucky
Well, considering the architecture of Mount Rushmore, which is an awe-inspiring site I have very much enjoyed, this might be doable. But the question remains. With whom would you replace him? Or would you just prefer a blank space?
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29th November 2012 at 8:01 pm
Administrator says:
I nominate Chester A. Arthur to replace Lincoln.
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29th November 2012 at 8:06 pm
taxSlave says:
Grover Cleveland – man did he write some good vetos on spending.
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29th November 2012 at 8:23 pm
llpoh says:
Carter deserves to be on the mount. Best. President. Ever. But make sure to leave room for Obama.
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29th November 2012 at 8:26 pm
FT says:
William Henry Harrison. An hour and forty five minute epic in a raging snowstorm? Now that’s a fucking speech!
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29th November 2012 at 9:14 pm
SSS says:
Chestur Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Jimmy Carter, Obama, William Henry Harrison? Meh.
I asked a simple question and get a bunch of smartass responses. Typical TBP.
How about Ike? Did anyone think about how EASY it would be to sculpt a bald man into Mount Rushmore?
Take a look at the figures on the monument. Lots of hair and a mustache for Teddy are a tough ticket on a mountainside. Bald guy like Ike? Piece of cake. Smooth up the rock on his head and you’re good. Plus he belongs there.
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29th November 2012 at 9:43 pm
Yojimbo says:
The hypocrisy of Lincoln’s pro-secession statements and his anti-secession use of force matches Obama exactly!
Obama says “no country would tolerate missiles raining down on its citizens from outside its borders”, but he uses drone warfare!
It’s a perfect match!
Watch for Obama to become the next Tyrant in Chief!
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29th November 2012 at 10:08 pm
mdt3 says:
I read it in a book I downloaded off the internet so it must be true.
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29th November 2012 at 10:54 pm
a cruel accountant says:
“The controversy has raged for a long time about whether the Civil War was really about slavery.”
Replace civil war with middle east war and slavery with democracy.
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29th November 2012 at 12:27 am
a cruel accountant says:
Replace lincoln with Jackson.
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29th November 2012 at 12:28 am
Kill Bill says:
Its kinda weird seeing a bunch of yanks who once badmouthed the south be for it
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29th November 2012 at 12:55 am
SAH says:
I agree with blowing Lincoln’s cursed face off of Mt Rushmore and putting Grover Cleveland in his place! It would be very fitting, as GC is the 3rd best US President of all time (after George Washington and Thomas Jefferson).
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29th November 2012 at 1:06 am
teset says:
“Give Obama time. I’ll be disappeared at some point.”
No. Give the government time. It’s much bigger than just Obama.
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29th November 2012 at 1:19 am
crazyivan says:
In cases like this I think we need to be thinking BIG.
Let’s carve out 4 two hundred-ton dildoes( complete with ballsacks) out of granite and stuff them by crane and helicopter into the blown out pieholes of these idolized fucks. The more amateurish the job the better. All the better to get on with things. Also we may scare the aliens. Win-win.
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29th November 2012 at 1:42 am
IndenturedServant says:
To hell with the sell out, paid for puppets. How about a man with demonstrable humility and integrity? I vote for Neil Armstrong.
I_S
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29th November 2012 at 2:27 am
ditchner says:
Monica Lewinsky with dim
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29th November 2012 at 3:46 am
flash says:
Stuck , the megalomaniac Roosevelt would be another good candidate for un-deification …blast this ego maniac’s mug off the mount too.
BTW ,all this talk of secession has finally entered main stream media and piqued pulbic interest about state rights and the cult of Lincoln which may finally open up into a frank and honest discussion on just what liberty is and isn’t.And none too son…
Williams penned a fine essay here.
Parting Company
by Walter E. Williams
Recently by Walter E. Williams: Democracy and Majority Rule
For decades, it has been obvious that there are irreconcilable differences between Americans who want to control the lives of others and those who wish to be left alone. Which is the more peaceful solution: Americans using the brute force of government to beat liberty-minded people into submission or simply parting company? In a marriage, where vows are ignored and broken, divorce is the most peaceful solution. Similarly, our constitutional and human rights have been increasingly violated by a government instituted to protect them. Americans who support constitutional abrogation have no intention of mending their ways.
Since Barack Obama’s re-election, hundreds of thousands of petitions for secession have reached the White House. Some people have argued that secession is unconstitutional, but there’s absolutely nothing in the Constitution that prohibits it. What stops secession is the prospect of brute force by a mighty federal government, as witnessed by the costly War of 1861. Let’s look at the secession issue.
At the 1787 constitutional convention, a proposal was made to allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, rejected it, saying: “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
On March 2, 1861, after seven states had seceded and two days before Abraham Lincoln’s inauguration, Sen. James R. Doolittle of Wisconsin proposed a constitutional amendment that said, “No State or any part thereof, heretofore admitted or hereafter admitted into the Union, shall have the power to withdraw from the jurisdiction of the United States.”
Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here’s my no-brainer question: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
On the eve of the War of 1861, even unionist politicians saw secession as a right of states. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, “Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty.”
The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace. Just about every major Northern newspaper editorialized in favor of the South’s right to secede. New York Tribune (Feb. 5, 1860): “If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861.” Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful, could produce nothing but evil – evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.” The New York Times (March 21, 1861): “There is growing sentiment throughout the North in favor of letting the Gulf States go.”
There’s more evidence seen at the time our Constitution was ratified. The ratification documents of Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly said that they held the right to resume powers delegated, should the federal government become abusive of those powers. The Constitution would have never been ratified if states thought that they could not maintain their sovereignty.
The War of 1861 settled the issue of secession through brute force that cost 600,000 American lives. Americans celebrate Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, but H.L. Mencken correctly evaluated the speech, “It is poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense.” Lincoln said that the soldiers sacrificed their lives “to the cause of self-determination – that government of the people, by the people, for the people should not perish from the earth.” Mencken says: “It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in the battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of people to govern themselves.”
November 27, 2012
Walter E. Williams is the John M. Olin distinguished professor of economics at George Mason University, and a nationally syndicated columnist. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate columnists and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page.
Copyright © 2012 Creators Syndicate, Inc.
The Best of Walter E. Williams
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29th November 2012 at 6:18 am
flash says:
For more lies force fed the inmates of public education see here:
Great Wars and Great Leaders: A Libertarian Rebuttal
Ralph Raico
http://library.mises.org/books/Ralph%20Raico/Great%20Wars%20and%20Great%20Leaders%20A%20Libertarian%20Rebuttal.pdf
http://mises.org/document/6046/Great-Wars-and-Great-Leaders-A-Libertarian-Rebuttal
and here:
Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World
Patrick J. Buchanan
http://www.amazon.com/Churchill-Hitler-Unnecessary-War-Britain/dp/0307405168
Were World Wars I and II inevitable? Were they necessary wars? Or were they products of calamitous failures of judgment?
In this monumental and provocative history, Patrick Buchanan makes the case that, if not for the blunders of British statesmen–Winston Churchill first among them–the horrors of two world wars and the Holocaust might have been avoided and the British Empire might never have collapsed into ruins. Half a century of murderous oppression of scores of millions under the iron boot of Communist tyranny might never have happened, and Europe’s central role in world affairs might have been sustained for many generations.
Among the British and Churchillian errors were:
• The secret decision of a tiny cabal in the inner Cabinet in 1906 to take Britain straight to war against Germany, should she invade France
• The vengeful Treaty of Versailles that mutilated Germany, leaving her bitter, betrayed, and receptive to the appeal of Adolf Hitler
• Britain’s capitulation, at Churchill’s urging, to American pressure to sever the Anglo-Japanese alliance, insulting and isolating Japan, pushing her onto the path of militarism and conquest
• The greatest mistake in British history: the unsolicited war guarantee to Poland of March 1939, ensuring the Second World War
Certain to create controversy and spirited argument, Churchill, Hitler, and “the Unnecessary War” is a grand and bold insight into the historic failures of judgment that ended centuries of European rule and guaranteed a future no one who lived in that vanished world could ever have envisioned.
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29th November 2012 at 6:23 am
flash says:
BTW the new dead count for the War of Northern Aggression has been recalculated to 750,000 , but this does not account for all ten of thousands Southern civilians who died from disease associated with starvation caused from crop destruction and Yankee pilfering.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/science/civil-war-toll-up-by-20-percent-in-new-estimate.html?pagewanted=all
With all the uncertainties, Dr. Hacker said, the data suggested that 650,000 to 850,000 men died as a result of the war; he chose the midpoint as his estimate.
He emphasized that his methodology was far from perfect. “Part of me thinks it is just a curiosity,” he said of the new estimate.
“But wars have profound economic, demographic and social costs,” he went on. “We’re seeing at least 37,000 more widows here, and 90,000 more orphans. That’s a profound social impact, and it’s our duty to get it right.”
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29th November 2012 at 6:30 am
John A says:
Replace Lincoln with JFK at Rushmore.
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29th November 2012 at 7:21 am
TeresaE says:
mdt3 says:
I read it in a book I downloaded off the internet so it must be true.
Had you read the book, or even the article, you might have realized that the book is a compilation of Lincoln’s own words.
NOT made up, NOT propagandized, but taken from Lincoln’s speeches.
Amazing how hard those that do not want their mind changed will fight to remain ignorant.
The Civil War was not about slavery, slavery could have been fixed with ONE law, the “if it’s human, it cannot be property law.”
Simple, but then, even Lincoln, the martyr of the black man, didn’t actually believe the black man was human and thus deserved basic human rights.
We were sold out, which is continuing to this day. Don’t look behind the curtain boys and girls, nothing to see here, just believe what our nice wizards have to say.
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29th November 2012 at 8:12 am
KaD says:
As for servitude; don’t forget the people who lost their jobs and can’t pay their bills and end up in prison: http://www.dailyfinance.com/2012/08/30/debtors-prison-is-back-and-just-as-cruel-as-ever/
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29th November 2012 at 9:41 am
BUCKHED says:
Lincoln and Roosevelt should be removed Stucky.
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29th November 2012 at 1:09 pm
Der Scheisskerl says:
a cruel accountant: Andrew Jackson’s efforts to abolish the Second Bank of the United States have already been acknowledged by his appearance on the twenty dollar bill.
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29th November 2012 at 2:33 pm