Questions and Answers
with Tom DiLorenzo

Q.
I found your portrait of Abraham Lincoln interesting, if not disturbing. It doesn't help to ask, "Why weren't we taught this in school?" Obviously, the textbook writers didn't hold to these ideas. Instead, can you help us understand why the version of history we were taught wasn't challenged earlier before it became fact in our collective mind, or was it?

A.
We shouldn't expect the government-run schools to teach very much other than the glories of all its conquests and crusades. Since most of us (including myself) attended public school, we've all been taught a politically correct version of the history of the U.S. government, including the War between the States. I have had some emails from people who have told me of teachers they had in high school who had studied history in college and who basically agreed with my interpretation of Lincoln and the War. So it's not as though no one was taught anything but government propaganda. The old saying that "In war, the victors always write the history" is certainly true.

I've also had people write me that 30 or 40 years ago the things I write about were widely discussed in university history classes on the topic. Evidence of this is that the book, The Civil War and Reconstruction by James Randall and David Donald, which was widely used as a textbook in the 60s, contains much of the information that is in my book. The newer textbooks have been whitewashed by comparison.

Q.
Your book cites many examples of Lincoln's abuse of power, even quoting Lincoln supporters as accepting his being characterized as a dictator, albeit a "benevolent" one. You explain how Lincoln squelched northern opposition to his war policies by abandoning the writ of habeas corpus and illegally arresting vocal opponents. If so, why, after his death, did the North protect his reputation? With his assassination they were no longer in jeopardy, and the damage was done; power was centralized in Washington and the Southern states had been held in the Union by force. What advantage did those he had wronged realize by denying his constitutional abuses?

A.
As the economist Murray Rothbard once pointed out, all government power ultimately rests on a substantial portion of the population believing in the ideas that motivate the regime in power, whether it's a king, a dictator, or a democracy. Even the Russian communists couldn't control things once it became so apparent to the Russian people that communism was a fraudulent institution.

So, even though the Republicans had a monopoly of political power for many years after the war, they nevertheless had to construct a false image of what Joe Sobran calls "the fantasy Lincoln" to provide an ideology in support of their political power. Their real purpose was the crudest form of patronage politics, which is not very attractive, so they needed something more glorious sounding. In fact, all government power depends on a series of myths about its alleged glories and successes.

Q.
We were still a democracy. It would seem that those in power after the war would be afraid of the possibility of these broadened powers eventually falling into the hands of those who opposed them politically. Did you find evidence that this was ever a concern?

A Politicians are all inherently short-sighted, with their eyes always on the next election, but not much further. I would think that most of the Reconstruction era Republicans figured that they might, at best, have a 20 year political career ahead of them, and that there was little chance that the Democrats would turn the tables on them in that time.

Q.
Surely, those on both sides of the Lincoln debate can agree that slavery was an inhumane institution. It would seem that any acknowledgement that many, if not the majority, of Confederate and Union soldiers were fighting over tariffs and the direction of our young government--rather than slavery--could only help to facilitate healing in the continuing dialogue between the races. Do you foresee a time when these documented lessons of history will both receive equal attention in our text-books?

A.
There is already a large change taking place in textbooks in many fields, thanks to the home schooling movement. Not only that, but so many parents who are dissatisfied with what their children are being taught in school have taken it upon themselves to purchase supplementary books and materials to educate their own children with, even if they are not full-time home schoolers. The internet also changes everything. All of my students at Loyola College, for example, use the internet prolifically in their research and study. This allows them to bypass a lot of the "filters" that the establishment sets up with regard to "acceptable" history and other subjects.

A short bio on Mr. Tom DiLorenzo, author of "The REAL LINCOLN":
Mr. DiLorenzo earned his Ph.D. in economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1979. He is currently a professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and has previously taught at George Mason University, State University of New York at Buffalo, Washington University in St. Louis, and University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He is the author or co-author of eleven books and more than 70 articles in academic economics journals and have also written in more popular outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, Readers Digest, the Washington Post, and many other newspapers and magazines.