Lincoln

Lincoln before taking office:

These authors demonstrate that the Civil War was fought over money and politics, not slavery. (Emancipation was introduced as a “war measure,” as Lincoln put it, in 1863, after the Battle of Antietam in the third year of the war when the Union was losing.) Following in the footsteps of Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln entered office with a political agenda that sought to create a strong centralized national authority. This would enable him, as president, to implement protective tariffs to shield (Northern) American industries from foreign competition; centralized banking, which would give him control of the money supply; and “internal improvements” (government subsidies to politically favored industries, particularly the railroad and canal-building companies that bankrolled the Republican Party). In 1861 the government’s principal source of revenue was import tariffs; and the South, with the greater number of ports, paid 87 percent of the import taxes that the federal government collected to fund its operations and pay government salaries (there were no corporate, property, or income taxes then). Lincoln needed to keep the Southern states in the Union to pay this disproportionate percentage of taxes.

 

ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 1809-1865, 16th president of the United States, 1861-1865
1.  America’s Most Deified Politician, Tom DiLorenzo, February 12, 2018.
2.  Check out these titles from DiLorenzo.   They are all excellent and no American history course that considers Abraham Lincoln in any detail should overlook these.  
3.  Lincoln was prepared to and did spend federal money to have African slaves deported.  
4.  Abraham Lincoln and the Federal Reserve: A Forgotten Connection, Gary North, September 24, 2013. 
5.  Historical Error #3: Lincoln Promoted Debt-Free, Paper Money (Greenbacks), Gary North,
6.  The Republican Moneyed Elite, Thomas J. Dilorenzo, October 1, 2003.  
7.  Lincoln and FDR, Gary North, 2001.
8.   Lincoln’s Culture of Death, Tom DiLorenzo, 2001. 
9.  The Lincoln Myth: Ideological Cornerstone of American Empire, Tom DiLorenzo, 2017.
10.  DiLorenzo and His Critics on the Lincoln Myth, James Ostrowski, 2003.

LINCOLN CHARACTERIZED
Murray Rothbard nails it.  From his “America’s Two Just Wars: 1775 and 1861”, in The Costs of War: America’s Pyrrhic Victories, John V. Denson, ed (2nd ed. 1999):

Lincoln was a typical example of the humanitarian with the guillotine: a familiar modern ‘reform liberal’ type whose heart bleeds for and yearns to ‘uplift’ remote mankind, while he lies to and treats abominably actual people whom he knew.

Rothbard’s quote comes from James Ostrowski’s review of Tom DiLorenzo’s Book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War (2002).  There are things you need to know about Lincoln and things that you need to know about institutions that who revere and deify Lincoln and what these organizations will say and do to you if you question the integrity of their secular saint.  This above all has to be made aware of if you’re going to study Lincoln.  Ostrowski lists 71 charges about Lincoln that most defenders of Lincoln will vehemently resist.  I will list only a few, but be sure to read Ostrowski’s article for all 71.  The list was true and funny: 

1.  Saying contradictory things before different audiences.
2.  Opposing racial equality.
3.  Opposing giving blacks the right to vote, serve on juries or intermarry while allegedly supporting their natural rights.
4.  Being a racist.
5.  Supporting the legal rights of slaveholders.
6.  Supporting Clay’s American System or mercantilism as his primary political agenda: national bank, high tariff, and internal improvements.
7.  Supporting a political economy that encourages corruption and inefficiency.
8.  Supporting a political economy that became the blueprint for modern American.

LINCOLN on RACE
Here Tom DiLorenzo reviews Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s book, Forced Into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream, 2000. 

Few Americans have ever been taught the truth about Lincoln and race, but it is all right there in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (CW), and in his actions and behavior throughout his life. For example, he said the following:

“Free them [i.e. the slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this . . . . We cannot then make them equals” (CW, vol. II, p. 256.

“What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races” (CW, vol. II, p. 521).

“I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races . . . . I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. I have never said anything to the contrary” (CW, vol. III, p, 16). (Has there ever been a clearer definition of “white supremacist”?).

“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races . . . . 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” (CW, vol. III, pp. 145-146).

“I will to the very last stand by the law of this state [Illinois], which forbids the marrying of white people with negroes” (CW, vol. III, p. 146).

“Senator Douglas remarked . . . that . . . this government was made for the white people and not for the negroes. Why, in point of mere fact, I think so too” (CW, vol. II, p. 281)

Lincoln was also a lifelong advocate of “colonization,” or the deportation of black people from America. He was a “manager” of the Illinois Colonization Society, which procured tax funding to deport the small number of free blacks residing in the state. He also supported the Illinois constitution, which in 1848 was amended to prohibit the immigration of black people into the state. He made numerous speeches about “colonization.” “I have said that the separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation . . . . such separation must be effected by colonization” (CW, vol. II, p. 409). And, “Let us be brought to believe it is morally right, and . . . favorable to . . . our interest, to transfer the African to his native clime” (CW, vol. II, p. 409). Note how Lincoln referred to black people as “the African,” as though they were alien creatures. “The place I am thinking about having for a colony,” he said, “is in Central America. It is nearer to us than Liberia” (CW, vol. V, pp. 373-374). 

Given what we’ve just read, how can any thinking individual conclude that Lincoln actually wanted to free the slaves for reasons of pure liberty?  For political reasons, maybe, but because he somehow loved black people? 

LINCOLN on EMANCIPATION 

Kirkpatrick Sale reminds us that: 

The Emancipation Proclamation was concocted by Lincoln as a war measure against the South, entirely on his own with only a few suggestions from his cabinet.  It was foist on the South without any thought as to the consequences, how it was to be enforced, what would happen to the newly freed slaves, what effect it would have on the plantations.  It made no provision for compensation, for integrating freedmen economically or politically into the system, for resettlement, not even 40 acres and a mule.

LINCOLN’S ASSASSINATION, DEEP STATE, & COVER-UP
Thanks to Eric Hunley and Mark Groubert.  Posted on Thursday, February 24, 2022.

It starts with the Baltimore Plot.  1861, Lincoln, coming from Illinois is heading to the White House.  Has to go through so many southern states to get to DC and so many confederate plots to kill him that he hires Alan Pinkerton to guard him that Lincoln is disguised when he comes in to Washington DC.  Then comes the national ridicule of him being a coward.  The New York Times has him dressed in a kilt; some newspapers report that he is in a dress.  Lincoln’s disguise is seen by the easterners and southern media as an of a coward. He didn’t win by a majority but by a plurality. He was not well-liked, even worse than some of the recently despised contemporaries  He got 2% of the vite in Baltimore.  In 1862, his son, Willie, drinks the water in the White House, which is taboo, and immediately dies of typhoid.  The water was still killing people.  And one reason why Mary Todd Lincoln begins to go insane.  She’s losing kid after kid.  Robert Lincoln, who’s 20, joins the Union Army, working under Ulysses S. Grant . . . .

Kidnapping plot was cooked before the assassination plot

Booth is a teenager who used to run a street gang in Baltimore and two if friends who were his friends were part of this plot to kidnap Lincoln.  These two, O’Laughlen and Arnold, were Booth’s boyhood friends who were part of the kidnapping plot but refused to be part of the killing plot.  Goes back to a plan of a colonel trying to free the union prisoners at Belle Isle with another union colonel when he was killed, a young guy with one leg, by a confederate soldier and they found letters on him that contained a plan to burn the city of Richmond, Virginia [capital of the confederate] to the ground, free the prisoners of Belle Isle [further reading here] and kill Jefferson Davis. Some historians believe that that gave the South the moral latitude to put together a plot to kill Lincoln.

Mason-Dixon Line was the dividing line between the North and the South.

The South was a rag-tag bunch.  They didn’t even have uniforms to cover everybody.

The Massachusetts regiment shows up in grey for the Battle of Bull Run, and the Virginia regiment, because they were all state militias, shows up in blue, so they don’t know who to shoot.  And the Confederate general for the Virginia regiment says let’s tie these white bands around our arm and let’s have this salute when we meet each other that goes like this [fist slaps heart] and says, “Our homes.” Soldiers were all laughing about this but they needed it because nobody knew who the hell anybody was.  That’s how off the uniforms were. You know you’re shooting people who look just like you who speak English.

John Wilkes Booth and Edwin Booth were two of the most famous actors of the day: this was the equivalent of Alec Baldwin or Brad Pitt, or the Barrymores, because the father of Booth, Brutus Booth, was the most famous actor of his day, a Shakespearean actor, a stage actor, he and Edwin became . . . he was the runt of the litter and made himself into a very, very established actor doing stage productions around the United States.  He was really, really famous.  It’s hard to over-emphasize just how famous John Wilkes Booth was, Eric.  Especially with the ladies.  He had a lot of ladies.

10:30  Lincoln was a real lover of Shakespeare plays and in a span of 2 months in 1864, he saw Richard III, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Julius Caesar, all in the span of two months.  The lead in all of the plays just mentioned was played by Edwin Booth, John Wilkes Booth’s brother.

11:20  Edwin Booth was standing on a train platform with hundreds and hundreds of soldiers lining up to get on board a train, and in front of him was Robert Todd Lincoln who falls onto the tracks as the train is coming into the station and Edwin Booth grabs Robert Todd Lincoln by the back of his lapel at the last minute to save Lincoln’s life in 1863 and gets a letter of commendation from General Grant, thanking him for saving the life of the president’s son.  Edwin Booth took up solace in that after the assassination when he disowned his brother . . . at least saving the president’s son made him feel a little better that he did something good for the president’s family.  So much Shakespearean tragedy in this story, Eric.  Wow.

12:25  The Kidnap Plot is a little crazy what he’s suggesting.

Kidnap Plot #1:  Lincoln is riding to the Old Soldier’s Home which is out in Virginia.  Without bodyguards, he would ride in a carriage to visit the old soldiers.  So everybody knows that he does this.  On one ride to the Home, he gets shot through his top hat from a sniper and he’s showing the bullet hole to people.  And he starts to realize that he’s got to have a bodyguard, and they assign him 1 guy.  The plot was to pick him off en route to the Old Soldier’s Home in Virginia and take him to a series of safe houses deeper and deeper into Southern territory . . . as a swap for prisoners’ release up in Belle’s Isle.  They tried multiple times to kidnap Lincoln and lots of mishaps like he didn’t show up to the play, . . . .  So many spies around DC.

13:35  Mary Surratt‘s house is on H Street.  Runs a boarding house.  Has a town named after her, called Surrattsville, a four-corners bar.  She’s a southern spy.  She’s a widow.  Her son, John Surratt, who later becomes part of the plot, was also a spy whose cover was a postman, a United States Postman.  The key to this was Montreal, the Casablanca of the North.  So riddles with Southern spies that it was called Little Richmond.  Everybody goes to New York and then from NY, go to Montreal where everybody mixes it up.  It’s like a free city of spycraft, like Mexico City of the 1960s, like Casablanca in WWII, it’s a free-fire zone, and everybody is spying on  That’s where all these guys hook up; that’s where everybody meets is in Montreal.  Train is troop transport.  You can put 1,000 guys on a train.  When they developed the Gatling Gun in 1865 when that train pulls up and the doors opened,

Lafayette was the first secret service agent, cites the original episode of the television series Wild, Wild West, 1965-1969, starring Ross Martin as Artemus Gordon and Robert Conrad as James West.  That Wikipedia page says that the show was canceled in 1969 “as a concession to Congress over television violence.”  Never heard that before.

17:15  Booth’s Ladies.  He’s the LBJ of assassins?

In the 1861 Baltimore Plot, there’s a 1951 movie called The Tall Target, MGM, it stars Dick Powell, and Dick Powell plays an NYPD Detective who breaks up a plot in Baltimore.  There’s a sniper on the roof trying to kill Lincoln.  That’s the topic of the film.  It was broken up by this New York detective in Baltimore, and his name was John Kennedy.  Just to deal with this Lincoln Kennedy connection, because Kennedy’s secretary was obviously Mrs. Lincoln.   Contrary to urban myth, there is no secretary named Kennedy to President Lincoln.  Kennedy was killed in a Ford Lincoln.  And Lincoln was killed in a Ford Theater.  Both were followed up by a Johnson.  LBJ was drunk at his inauguration; he fucked it up, and he mispronounced the names and said “Ah, fuck it,” and at one point Sam Rayburn was swearing him in.  And the same thing happened to Andrew Johnson when he was sworn in, 1865, as vice president.  Completely shit-faced, made a fool out of himself, and here you have both Johnsons, both Southerners, both drunk, both screwing up their inauguration as vice president.

Bessie Hale was significant because of her daddy.  Her father was the first abolitionist voted into the US Senate and her fiance was John Wilkes Booth.  On the day of Lincoln’s assassination, Lincoln gives Senator John Parker Hale [nice letter from Booth to Hale in that Wikipedia link] the ambassadorship to Spain.  She is taking Spanish lessons from John Wilkes Booth over breakfast.  On the day of Lincoln’s assassination, Bessie Hale meets with her other lover, Robert Todd Lincoln, and has dinner with him.  She’s in a love triangle with the son of the President and the President’s assassin.  Robert Todd Lincoln is the black widow of assassinations?  What does he mean by that?  He ends up being the Secretary of War for McKinley and Garfield and he’s at both of their assassinations.  Lincoln Memorial in DC was dedicated in 1922; took 8 years to build, 1914-1922.  Booth is dating the fiance of the murder of his father.  OMG.

Posted Saturday, February 18, 2023
Thanks to Razorfist?  He has a second tag of Rageaholic, but seems mostly to cover video games and marvel movies.