The Problem with Lincoln Hardcover – July 7, 2020

Tom DiLorenzo does it again.I have read Dr. DiLorenzo two prior books about Lincoln; "The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War" and "Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe" and through that the myth of Lincoln being the best American president had been fully debunked. However, in "The Problem with Lincoln" Dr. DiLorenzo chronicles even more abuses of power and more myths about Lincoln.For those who want to learn the truth about the Lincoln administration, it will probably come as a shocker that actions taken by Lincoln are used by Presidents to justify every abuse of civil liberties committed over the past 75 years--from FDR's disgraceful secret trial of the German saboteurs in WWII to George W. Bush's mass surveillance and warrantless searches of American citizens. All these despotic actions can be traced back to Abe Lincoln. Dr. DiLorenzo should be commended for standing up and telling the truth about a man who was willing to have slavery protected forever by the Constitution (through the Corwin Amendment) to mass arrest of opposition newspaper publishers to his enthusiasm for deporting all newly free slaves to Africa or Central America.Any reader of this book will see how a massive public relations and propaganda campaign can create a myth which is believed after 150 years.

I have read quite a lot about Lincoln in the last year, and most of it has been amazing praise. I intentionally ordered this book because I wanted to read multiple perspectives on Lincoln and make sure that I wasn't falling for some propaganda about the Great Emancipator. This book brings up a lot of good points that are sorely needed in Lincoln biographies. For example, I've yet to read a book on Lincoln which talks about how incredibly unpopular he was or says anything about tariffs. They all just assume the war was about slavery and don't even mention any other factors (I'm hoping that Sidney Blumenthal's unfinished series on Lincoln addresses many of these points and I'm sure it will).When the book started it was very intriguing to hear an anti-Lincoln perspective from someone who genuinely is anti-Lincoln, but the longer the book went on the more I realized that while DiLorenzo is bringing up his own points about Lincoln, he's completely failing to address criticisms of the views he holds. For example, he says the Civil War was more about tariffs than about slavery, and argues that Lincoln was planning on plundering the South with high tariffs. In this view the war was about money. But DiLorenzo fails to address that New York actually made up 63.5% of tariff revenue in the nation in 1860. That's almost two-thirds of tariff revenue in the whole country without even mentioning the other Northern states. He presents it as if the South was almost 100% of the tariff revenue and Lincoln and his cronies were just trying to take advantage of the South.By presenting only an argument against Lincoln, DiLorenzo completely ignores all the well established arguments against his own views and speaks past scholarship. It's as if he is trying to indoctrinate the uneducated who aren't familiar with solid arguments against his position. The irony is that this book is incredible short and about one-third of the pages are made up of appendixes such as the emancipation proclamation and Lincoln's first inaugural address. Since the book was so short there is no excuse to ignore very solid arguments against your position.All in all, I do think this book presents a very good case that the states did have the right to secede, and also that Lincoln was more a man of his time than people realize. For example, Doris Kearns Goodwin in "Team of Rivals" presents Lincoln as a man who was for removing freed slaves to a colony in a different country. According to her, Lincoln dropped this idea when leaders of the black community opposed him on it. However, DiLorenzo points out that Lincoln was actually expressing this view up until 3 days before he was assassinated.Overall, I'm glad I read this book for the perspective; but it is annoying that he didn't use the opportunity to both present arguments and then defend them against valid points.

I am impressed with how well this book is researched and written. This is a short book that is easy to read. This book answered a lot of questions I had about the civil war and the political dynamics of that time. It was enlightening and frustrating how the victors rewrote history by only teaching students what they wanted them to know. This is becoming more evident with the current cancel culture trying to remove parts of history by censoring it, denying our history the good and the bad is a mistake. We are the sum of all our history not just the delicate pieces. This book certainly add to factual history and should be taught as such in our schools. I have pointed many people to this book and several have purchased it because they had never heard about the facts in it. I hope more factual historical books continue to be written that challenge what our schools are indoctrinating people with today.I would absolutely recommend this book to anyone to read to get history as it really happened.

Having read Dr. DiLorenzo's previous books on Lincoln, it didn't seem so important to read this one. After the first couple of pages I quickly changed my mind. This book is the most concise and well researched book on Lincoln that I have ever read. While the title is an understatement, this brilliant work could be and should be the final coffin nail in the Lincoln myth.If every teacher and professor in the country would read this book and begin teaching the truth about that hideous war criminal and tyrant it might transform American education. Of course this would require academia to admit that they have been lying to everyone for generations. Television media personalities would have to stop standing in front of pictures and statues of Lincoln to Impress us with their fake historical knowledge.Sooner or later it would get out that the Ku Klux Klan and Jim Crow laws were just as prominent in the North as they were in the South. Overturning the Lincoln lie is going to be huge challenge. This is just the book to do it.