Reddit reviews Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe

If you are interested in Lincoln without the propaganda and revisionist, I would suggest you read:

The Real Lincoln by Thomas DiLorenzo

Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe by Thomas DiLorenzo

Mr. Lincoln Goes to War by William Marvel - a Lincoln scholar coming clean about Lincoln

We can all suppose about his private life...but it's not even what he said so much as what he did. Just give it a read. It's quick...should take you a few days at most. I don't agree with all of DiLorenzo's political views, but it's a hell of a lot more complex than "he hated slavery privately but was sympathetic to it publicly". The civil war is much, much more complex than most people care to acknowledge.

>I have expressed that it appears to me that the Civil War was not about slavery but was about preserving the Union

It was about both; the southern states wanted to keep slavery, and when it was made clear that they couldn't, wanted to secede, and Lincoln cared only about preserving the union at any cost, and didn't really have an opinion about slavery.

>My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.

The Federal government won, and as usual the victors wrote the history books (especially in government schools). This is why Americans believe what they believe.

EDIT: I found this book very enlightening on the subject.

>What if you were told that the revered leader Abraham Lincoln was actually a political tyrant who stifled his opponents by suppressing their civil rights? What if you learned that the man so affectionately referred to as the “Great Emancipator” supported white supremacy and pledged not to interfere with slavery in the South? Would you suddenly start to question everything you thought you knew about Lincoln and his presidency?

>You should.

>Could you name a prominent person who fits the description?

I can't think of any prominent politicians off the top of my head because I don't care and it's borderline a violation of rule 2. But in terms of my area of concern in this post, Civil War, antebellum, and Reconstruction-era revisionist Thomas DiLorenzo is one, whose lecture is linked in the post linked in my initial post. His work is best characterized as polemics directed toward notable Civil War Union leaders, most prominently his writings on Lincoln, and his ignorance of slavery in the causes of the Civil War with a focus on tariffs as a primary cause. His work is not respected by any notable Civil War historian working as an academic today, and most pop Civil War historians.

>Lew Rockwell is one mendacious, historically selective piece of intellectual garbage.

Please, if you are going to insult someone, at least have the common decency to retort with objective, factual pieces of evidence. Lew Rockwell, and those who write on his website, have sources for their claims, thus they can back their claims up.
Also, there have been many books written about this topic such as this and this.

You're conflating issues, really, and have no historical basis for your positions.

Here is a fantastic book on Lincoln and what kind of man he was.

[Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed To Know About Dishonest Abe] (https://www.amazon.com/Lincoln-Unmasked-Youre-Supposed-Dishonest/dp/0307338428/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8)

I'm not going to sit by while you repeat things your government teachers told you.

The letters written by the southern soldiers and their commanders tells a wholly different story about why the war was fought.

It was a war to defend their countries (i.e. the states.) The Constitution was ratified separately by the 13 countries (the word "state" at that time was used to describe places such as France, Spain, etc.) coming together.

If they were not separate countries, they would have simply held one ratifying convention in a chosen national capital, and that would have been it.

Again, the reasons for secession are not important, as the legal and moral basis was sound all on its own. The north instigated and provoked a war to justify imprisoning the people of the south into a union which they wanted no part.

For less than the cost of the Civil War on the North's part, they could have offered the slave owners double to triple the value of their slaves. England ended slavery without a civil war, and so could of Lincoln. He simply was blood and power hungry.