Exclusive Interview
Thomas James DiLorenzo on Abraham Lincoln, U.S. Authoritarianism and Manipulated History
The Daily Bell is pleased to present an exclusive interview with Thomas DiLorenzo.
Introduction: Thomas James DiLorenzo is an American economics professor at Loyola University Maryland. He is also a senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and an affiliated scholar of the League of the South Institute, the research arm of the League of the South, and the Abbeville Institute. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Tech. DiLorenzo has authored at least ten books, including The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution-and What It Means for Americans Today, How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, From the Pilgrims to the Present, and Lincoln Unmasked: What You're Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe. DiLorenzo lectures widely, and is a frequent speaker at Mises Institute events.
Daily Bell: You're prolific and widely read. So please excuse the repetition of our questions. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in economics.
Thomas DiLorenzo: I was an economics major at Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, where in my first semester the professor used as a "supplementary text" a little book of essays on current economic events by Milton Friedman. They were a collection of Friedman's Newsweek magazine columns, which he wrote in the 1970s. I loved how he used economics to explain just about everything about the economic world and economic policy. I also admired his very persuasive writing and speaking styles, and spent years in school trying to emulate it (and that of others who had similar talents). I also discovered The Freeman magazine, published by the Foundation for Economic Education, while a freshman in college, and reading through the back issues introduced me to the whole classical liberal tradition of scholarship, especially the free-market economists like Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Israel Kirzner, Friedman, and others. I earned a Ph.D. in economics at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where one of my professors was James M. Buchanan, who won the Nobel Prize in economics for being one of the founders of the "Public Choice" School, which uses economic theory and methodology to analyze politics and political institutions. One of the textbooks I used in my first semester at VPI was Human Action by Ludwig von Mises. That course was my real introduction to Austrian economics, which I then pursued mostly on my own.
Daily Bell: You're a valued member of the Mises Institute. When did you join?
Thomas DiLorenzo: When I was an assistant professor of economics at George Mason University in the early 1980s I received a flyer in the mail from Murray Rothbard and Lew Rockwell announcing the creation of the Mises Institute. I sent them a check for $35, which I suppose made me a "member." I soon began sending them articles for their monthly publication, The Free Market, and presented papers at some of the early Mises Institute conferences. I've been teaching at the week-long Mises University that is held every summer for almost twenty years now. In short, I've been associated with the Mises Institute from its very beginning.
Daily Bell: How did you arrive at your insights about Lincoln? Explain, in a short summary if you can, what they are.
Thomas DiLorenzo: As for my research and publications on Lincoln, Civil War history was a hobby of mine for years, and I began thinking about how I could combine my profession, economics, with my hobby and get a few things published. I was struck by the fact that for his entire adult political life Lincoln was almost exclusively devoted to Hamiltonian mercantilism – high protectionist tariffs, other forms of corporate welfare, a central bank modeled after the Bank of England to pay for it all, and political patronage and matching politics. It made no sense at all that his ascendancy to the presidency had nothing to do with these issues, as America's court historians say, or that these issues had nothing to do with the reason for the war. In fact, in his first inaugural address he literally threatened "invasion" and "bloodshed" (his exact words) if the Southern states that had seceded refused to continue to pay the federal tariff on imports, the average rate of which had just been doubled two days earlier. The entire agenda of Hamiltonian mercantilism was put into place during the Lincoln administration – along with the first income tax, the first military conscription law, and the creation of the internal revenue bureaucracy, among other monstrosities.
Daily Bell: You write about Lincoln from an economic perspective. Shouldn't more history be written this way? It seems a natural marriage.
Thomas DiLorenzo: Most historians generally know nothing at all about economics, but that doesn't stop them from writing book after book on economic topics, including the economics of the Civil War. There are a lot of books out there in university libraries that contain the facts about Lincoln, but these facts rarely make it into the textbooks that American children use. Education is dominated by the state, after all, and the state only criticizes past politicians who were not sufficiently statist (like Warren Harding, for instance). Being an economist and a libertarian gives one a very different lens with which to look at this information. Historians simply don't understand the importance of how the American political economy was transformed by the Lincoln regime, and most of them are rather buffoonish, excuse-making court historians when it comes to Lincoln who is, after all, the face and image of the American empire.
Daily Bell: Was it difficult to write a revisionist history about Lincoln?
Thomas DiLorenzo: As a libertarian, I saw it as my duty to spread the truth about what a horrific tyrant Lincoln was, with his illegal suspension of Habeas Corpus and the imprisonment of tens of thousands of political dissenters in the North; his shutting down of over 300 opposition newspapers; his deportation of the leader of the congressional opposition, Democratic Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Ohio; and his purposeful waging of total war on civilians. He destroyed the voluntary union of the founding fathers and destroyed the system of federalism that was the hallmark of the original constitution by using military force to "prove" that nullification and secession were illegal. Might makes right. Unlike England, Spain, France, Denmark, Holland, Sweden, and other countries that ended slavery peacefully in the nineteenth century, Lincoln used the slaves as political pawns in a war that both he and the U.S. Congress declared to the world in 1861 was being waged for one reason only: to "save the union." But as I said, he really destroyed the voluntary union of the founders.
Daily Bell: Was the Civil War popular in the North? What did people think of Lincoln in his day?
Thomas DiLorenzo: Lincoln was immensely unpopular during his time. How could he not have been, with having imprisoned tens of thousands of people in the North without any due process, shutting down hundreds of newspapers, handing thousands of Northern men death sentences in the form of military conscription, and generally ruling as a tyrant. Even with the South out of the union he only won the 1864 election with 55% of the vote, and that was after federal troops were used to rig the elections by intimidating Democratic voters at the polling places.
The Civil War was immensely unpopular in the North. That's why Lincoln had to imprison so many dissenters and shut down most of the opposition press. It's also why he resorted to the slavery of military conscription. There were draft riots in New York City and elsewhere. In the July, 1863 New York City draft riots Lincoln sent 15,000 troops who fired into the crowds, killing hundreds in the streets. Entire regiments of Union Army soldiers deserted on the eve of battle again and again, and tens of thousands – probably more – deserted.
Slavery could have been ended peacefully as all other nations did – and as the Northern states did – in the nineteenth century. There were still slaves in New York City as late as 1853. The real purpose of the war was to end once and for all the ability of American citizens to control the federal government by possessing the powers given to them by the Tenth Amendment, including the power of nullifying unconstitutional federal laws, and secession or the threat of secession. Thomas Jefferson believed that the Tenth Amendment was the cornerstone of the Constitution. Lincoln, who was the political son of Jefferson's nemesis, Alexander Hamilton, removed that cornerstone by orchestrating the murder of some 350,000 fellow American citizens, including more than 50,000 civilians according to historian James McPherson.
Jefferson's dream of an "empire of liberty" was ended once and for all, and America was on the road to becoming just another corrupt, mercantilist empire like the British and Spanish empires.
Daily Bell: We notice that municipal corruption began right after the Civil War. Were eruptions such as Tammany Hall mere coincidences or a symptom of something deeper?
Thomas DiLorenzo: It was no mere coincidence that the post-war Grant administration became notorious for political corruption associated with the government subsidization of the transcontinental railroads. American politicians had debated the constitutionality of granting taxpayer-financed subsidies to corporations ever since 1789. The biggest opposition to the subsidies came from the South: presidents Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Jackson, and Tyler all opposed them, or insisted that the Constitution be amended first to permit them. Northern politicians were always the biggest supporters of corporate welfare.
Daily Bell: Did the Civil War mark the end of the US as a republic and the beginning of the US as an empire?
Thomas DiLorenzo: In The Real Lincoln I quote the historian Leonard P. Curry as saying that after the war there were no longer any "constitutional scruples" about squandering taxpayers' money on corporate boondoggles. The railroads were only the beginning of what is on display today with multi-trillion dollar bailouts of Wall Street, General Motors and Chrysler, and even now the Greek banks (which Wall Street must be heavily invested in).
Daily Bell: Did British and European bankers secretly back the North during the Civil War even though the perception was that Britain was sympathetic to the South?
Thomas DiLorenzo: There was no secret conspiracy of British bankers to support the Lincoln regime. The Lincoln administration financed the war with tax revenue, the printing of "Greenbacks" (which created massive inflation), and borrowing, including borrowing from European bankers. It was all out in the open. This is how governments always finance wars.
Daily Bell: Why didn't the South just stand down? There's a theory that if the South had simply declared its independence and walked away that there would not have been much the North could do. Why did the South willingly embark on a shooing war?
Thomas DiLorenzo: The South did not "embark on a shooting war'" Lincoln did. The states were sovereign, and therefore had a right to secede, as they do today. Article 7 of the Constitution proves this by stating that the Constitution is to be ratified by political conventions of the states. No human being was harmed, let alone killed during the bombing of Fort Sumter. South Carolinians considered the fort to be their property, paid for with their tax dollars, and erected for their protection. Lincoln responded to Fort Sumter with a full-scale invasion of all the Southern states that ended up killing some 350,000 Southerners. For this he is hailed as "a great statesman" by our court historians.
Daily Bell: Still, there are those who believe it was a mistake for the South to have initiated hostilities at all.
Thomas DiLorenzo: Lincoln had sent warships to Charleston Harbor, and successfully duped the South Carolinians into foolishly firing on the fort. Afterwards, Lincoln wrote a letter of thanks and congratulation to his naval commander Gustavus Fox for assisting him in getting the war started in this way. It was the biggest political miscalculation in American history: Lincoln (and many other Northerners) believed the war would be relatively bloodless and last only a few weeks or months.
Daily Bell: It was a terrible tragedy and still evokes strong emotions today. Have you brought anyone in mainstream academia over to your side?
Thomas DiLorenzo: There are many American academics who have thanked me for writing my books on Lincoln, and they are using them in their classrooms. But the "Lincoln Cult," as I call it, is a lost cause. These are people whose human capital is entirely wrapped up in the spinning of fairy tales and myths about Lincoln; revealing the truth about the real Lincoln destroys their life's work, so I am not the least bit concerned about persuading any of them. My books are written for the general public, students, and open-minded academics who don't have a financial stake in maintaining the false Lincoln myths.
Daily Bell: Has American academia become at least a little more evenhanded as a result of your exposes?
Thomas DiLorenzo: The Lincoln myth has deified not only Lincoln but the American presidency in general. The poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren once wrote that the war gave the North a "treasury of virtue" because of all the myths that were fabricated after the war. In war, the victors always write the history. This false virtue has been used ever since to portray American foreign policy as benevolent, selfless, and saintly. Thus, there are many people with careers, income and wealth dependent upon the propping up of the American foreign policy establishment with the myth of "American exceptionalism." Anything "we" do is right and just, simply because it is "we" who are doing it.
Daily Bell: Why was Lincoln assassinated? Did he break with the monetary backers of the Civil War in your opinion?
Thomas DiLorenzo: As for why Lincoln was assassinated, I suspect it was simply an act of revenge for having micromanaged the murder of hundreds of thousands of fellow American citizens from the Southern states; burning many of their cities and towns to the ground; and plundering tens of millions of dollars of private property. Southerners also knew that Lincoln had attempted to have their president, Jefferson Davis, assassinated by Union Army soldiers. (Look up "The Dahlgren Raid" on the Web).
Daily Bell: Is the US really several nations? Do states have the right to secede today?
Thomas DiLorenzo: I think secession is not only possible but necessary if any part of America is every to be considered "the land of the free" in any meaningful sense. As Thomas Jefferson said late in life, if the country becomes several different republics, "they will all be our children." He meant that they would all still be Americans, and he wished them all well. His view of secession was the exact opposite of Lincoln's tyrannical "pay up or die" declaration from his first inaugural address.
Daily Bell: Has the Internet helped publicize your work? Would your work have received as much attention without the Internet?
Thomas DiLorenzo: One only has to look at the Web site of the Mises Institute (www.mises.org) to see that there is a great deal of research and publication going on by scholars who are educated in Austrian economics and who consider themselves to be defenders of a free society. My friend Thomas E. Woods has published two New York Times bestsellers (The Politically-Incorrect Guide to American History, and Meltdown), and a survey of mises.org will introduce readers to such authors as Robert Higgs, Robert Murphy, and free-market/libertarian "revisionist" historians. What is being "revised" are the lies and misconceptions that plague the obsessively politically-correct history profession. Much of the writing of authors like these is on the Web, which has revolutionized the world of scholarship whereby the politically-correct "gatekeepers" of the Official Truth are routinely ignored and openly ridiculed.
Daily Bell: What other books and resources would you recommend to our readers?
Thomas DiLorenzo: My latest book project is tentatively entitled "False Virtue: The Myths that Transformed America From A Republic to an Empire." It will be about what the federal government did with all that "virtue" after the Civil War, such as its war of extermination against the Plains Indians, subsidies to the transcontinental railroads, so-called "reconstruction," the Spanish-American War, etc.
Daily Bell: Thank you for speaking with us. It has been most informative.
We very much enjoyed this interview with Thomas DiLorenzo because we think he has proven to be one of the most important and effective historians for free-markets and for helping people understand what happened to the American sociopolitical "exception" – and how it went wrong. DiLorenzo – especially through his affiliation with the trailblazing Mises Institute – has fought the good fight for several decades now for a more balanced perspective on Lincoln. He has done so against the weight of a collective academic universe in the United States that has long looked upon Lincoln with almost sociopathic approbation.
Even the few, timid, conservative retellings of the Lincoln myth actually shed little light on the actuality of the man's accomplishments – both good and bad – until DiLorenzo came along. One of Abraham Lincoln's most prominent historians is Harry V. Jaffa, and his books, available in the 1990s, were considered "revisionist" in terms of the way they profiled Lincoln from a conservative point of view. But reading Jaffa was a dense slog, and it took a DiLorenzo (thankfully) to cut through the rhetoric. He debated Jaffa at one point in the early 2000s, and also attempted to clarify Jaffa's point of view in articles and book reviews. Here's an excerpt from a book review by DiLorenzo, in May of 2002 of Jaffa's book, A New Birth of Freedom, which can be found at the Independent Institute website:
Jaffa has spent a lifetime expounding upon Lincoln's rendition of constitutional history that was first invented by Joseph Story and Daniel Webster—that the Union preceded the states, as opposed to the view (the correct one, in my opinion) that the sovereign states formed the government as their agent by adopting the Constitution. (St. George Tucker's View of the Constitution of the United States is the best exposition of the latter view; Jaffa's book is the best of the former view).
This is indeed the crux of the matter. Whatever else Jaffa liked or disliked about Lincoln, the nation's foremost conservative Lincoln-historian (at least during the late 20th century) was busy retelling Lincoln's life in such a way as to rebut any idea that the Southern states had a right to secede. He was, in other words, writing about Lincoln as an apologist for the American federal government. Looked at from this point of view, Jaffa's scholarship was actually a kind of sociopolitical propaganda. And Jaffa was not alone. When the full report on its literature is written – academic and otherwise – we believe the 20th century will be found to have been a fount of authoritarian perspectives, some better disguised than others.
It is fairly indisputable as a matter of fact. One can look at almost any grouping of similar books from the era – from history to science fiction to "the Beats" (Burroughs, Ginsberg, etc.) – and discover they are full of works by apologists for the state in one way or another. This is what has made the Internet and the 21st century itself such a blessing from an intellectual standpoint. Led by the Mises Institute, the frame of reference has gradually begun to right itself. We can see this in work that DiLorenzo has accomplished, and increasingly in historical and sociopolitical scholarship in other areas beyond economics. We would anticipate later in the 21st century that there will be an efflorescence of free-market fiction that will finally provide Ayn Rand with some company.
Writers like DiLorenzo deserve our thanks not only because they have brought some much-needed sanity and balance to literature, but also because they are blazing the path to a more balanced literature generally. To write critically of Lincoln in the 20th century, even the late 20th century was an act of great academic courage. But beyond DiLorenzo's accomplishment, let us mull an academic establishment – and a publishing media, generally – that was sealed as tightly as a coffin when it came to free-market arguments of any sort in the 20th century. The censorship was quiet as the grave and just as powerful. It is a startling to look back on this state of affairs. How much has changed! The times we live in are "interesting" – but exciting as well. (Introduction excerpted from Wikipedia.)
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Posted by Mandy on 11/22/10 06:50 PM
It is true ...
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Posted by Tobler Law on 10/12/10 01:46 PM
Thanks for the post! I hate it when people manipulate history.
Click to view link
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Posted by D.L. Hatton on 09/26/10 02:30 PM
The argument for the right of secession is based upon the opinion that each state before the Constitutional Convention was a sovereign nation.The right of secession also uses the Declaration of Independence that states that any people have a right of changing their government when that government no longer preserves their God given rights.
These are an accurate assessment of affairs in the military revolutionary period, however a constitutional crisis occurred when the leaders of the new nation could see the machinations of Europe to enslave the colonists. Our founding fathers could see the fragmentation that would take place unless a more perfect Union was formed. In accordance with the precept in the Declaration the people formed a new government because the old government (The Articles of Confederation) was found to be inadequate. In this new government all the states were forbidden to exercise all the powers generally accepted as the powers of nations under the law of nations which were the power to coin money, raise armies, declare war and peace, sent and receive ambassadors ect.
James Madison states very clearly in the Federalist Papers that in a republic the people are sovereign. This is in keeping with the view of Jefferson that when men enter into society they give up no rights what-so-ever. This concept was preserved in the ninth amendment that states that people have all rights and is re-enforced throughout the original Constitution and Bill of Rights which state in all case where right s are mentioned it refers to people, persons individuals ect.
The Tenth amendment deals only with powers. Powers are inherent in the people because they have all rights and only they have a right to delegate powers. It is so declared; "We the people in order to form a more perfect union". In this document the people delegated certain enumerated powers to the federal government.
What powers were reserved to the states? The powers delegated to the individual states by the people of that state. What powers were retained by the people? All powers not specifically delegated to the Federal government or to the individual state governments. Did the States of the confederacy secede by powers delegated to them by the Federal Constitution? If so where is the power enumerated?
Did the people of the states delegate to their respective state governments the power to secede? Case in point; Sam Houston was elected by a solid majority of the people as governor of Texas in 1858 upon the platform that he would not support any effort to secede from the union declaring that Texas was awash with British agents agitating for just an occurrence. When the other states (State Governments) were seceding from the union Sam Houston stood fast. Officers of the Militia friendly to the Confederacy arrested him and took over the government of Texas.
Sam Houston spent the war years under house arrest. A careful study of the principles of the Declaration of Independence on the rights of the people, the enumerated powers delegated by the people to the federal government and to the state governments one will find that power to secede has never been granted by the people. State Sovereignty (Sovereignty of the State Governments) is a myth.
Listen to the father of the Constitution: "Experience is the oracle of truth; and where its reposes are unequivocal, they ought to be conclusive and sacred. the important truth, which it unequivocally pronounces in the present case, is, that a sovereign over sovereigns, a government over governments, a legislation for communities, as contra-distinguished from individuals, as it is a solecism in theory; so in practice, it is subversive of the order and ends of civil polity, by substituting violence in place of law, or the coertion of the sword, in place of the mild and salutary coertion of the magistracy." (Federalist no. 20)
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Posted by Will See on 07/20/10 06:11 PM
Perhaps Loyola Professor,Tom DiLorenzo, since he castigate Lincoln as the cause of all emerging problems in the US today, would care to publicly debate the question: Did the Jesuits and Vatican conspire with John Wilkes Booth and John Surratt to assassinate Lincoln?"
I would be glad to argue publicly that YES, they did. Would DiLorenzo like to argue they were not involved?
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Posted by FauxCapitalist on 05/31/10 08:13 PM
Dr. DiLorenzo said in his interview, "The entire agenda of Hamiltonian mercantilism was put into place during the Lincoln administration."
Since he earlier said that Hamiltonian mercantalism included "a central bank modeled after the Bank of England," he did indeed assert that a private central bank was created by Lincoln, even if it was indirectly.
Reply from The Daily Bell
We thought he defended his statement very well.
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Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo on 05/30/10 12:41 PM
Response to "private central bank misinformation"
Posted May 27, 2010 by fauxcapitalist
"Thomas DiLorenzo, professor of economics at Loyola University, associate at the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and frequent writer for Click to view link, makes an incredibly misinformed statement about the Bank of England and Lincoln's issuance of money to fund the Civil War, in a May 17, 2010 Daily Bell interview. ... in no way did Lincoln create any central bank, let alone a private one like the Bank of England, as DiLorenzo asserts. The money was issued interest-free through the public U.S. treasury, as appropriated by Congressional legislation signed by Lincoln."
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Thomas DiLorenzo responds ...
This commentary could not possibly be more wrongheaded.
Lincoln spent his entire political career prior to becoming president advocating a resurrection of the Bank of the United States (BUS), Alexander Hamilton's scheme. Twenty percent of the BUS was capitalized with tax dollars, the rest was privately financed. It was mostly privately owned, but politically controlled.
Hamilton and his political compatriots in the Federalist Party wanted a national bank modeled (but not identical to) after the Bank of England, and controlled by politicians like themselves, to help finance corporate welfare for the politically well connected. It was to be an engine of political patronage, which it did in fact become. Hamilton himself labeled his (and his party's) political agenda of corporate welfare, protectionist tariffs, and a central bank "The American System."
In reality, it was nothing more than British mercantilism brought to America. That's why the subtitle of my book, Hamilton's Curse, is "How Jefferson's Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution -- And What It Means for Americans Today." The founding generation fought a revolution against the type of political/economic system that was championed by Hamilton, Henry Clay and the Whig Party, and eventually Lincoln and the Republican Party.
When Lincoln first entered politics in 1832 he announced to a Springfield, Illinois, audience that "My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman's dance. I am in favor of a national bank . . . in favor of the internal improvement system [corporate welfare] and a high protective tariff" (emphasis added).
He was in favor of British-style mercantilism, in other words, the mantle of which had been picked up by Lincoln's political role model, Henry Clay. Lincoln once stated that all of his political ideas came from the slave-owner Henry Clay, and indeed they did. Clay also promoted "The American System" throughout his entire career. It was the agenda of the Whig Party of Clay and Lincoln. Lincoln was a Whig for some twenty years, and a Republican for about than ten.
In his book, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party (p. 228), University of Virginia historian Michael Holt wrote that "few people in the [Whig] Party were so committed to its economic agenda as Lincoln," who "crisscrossed the state [of Illinois] ardently and eloquently defending specific Whig programs like a national bank." In speech after speech, Lincoln bemoaned the demise of the BUS during the Andrew Jackson presidency and persistently called for is resurrection.
As president, Lincoln signed off on the National Currency Acts and the Legal Tender Acts, which greatly centralized the American banking system. It didn't resurrect the old Bank of the United States, but it went a very long way toward creating a governmental-controlled monetary monopoly and paved the way for the Federal Reserve. The New York Times editorialized on March 9, 1963, that "The legal tender act and the national currency bill crystallized . .. a centralization of power, such as Hamilton might have eulogized as magnificent."
Finally, I did not say in my Daily Bell interview that Lincoln "created a central bank," as this commentator falsely states. I said he was devoted to that objective, and he certainly was. Therefore, this entire commentary is a straw-man argument.
Thomas DiLorenzo
Professor of Economics
Loyola University Maryland
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Posted by FauxCapitalist on 05/29/10 12:03 AM
@Hugolp: Public central banks return all their benefits to the government. Private central banks, including the Federal Reserve, skim off additional money. The private Federal Reserve member banks take a 6% annual dividend from their stock in their regional Fed bank.
See my article Click to view link for the Federal Reserve's disinfo about Greenbacks.
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Posted by Will See on 05/28/10 05:46 PM
Virtually every time I hear "informed Patriots" complain about what Lincoln did, I know I am in for another round of ignorance and self-styled intellectualism.
Maybe you should read the transcripts of the Lincoln-Douglas debates or his own writings instead of history scam artists who are backed by the very powers that have done EVERYTHING they can to destroy the Republic. DiLorenzo's Jesuits have been expelled no less than 73 times in Europe for this very thing!
Amazing that after all these years, Jesuit Coadjutors like Loyola Professor DiLorenzo are STILL trying to kill Lincoln again and again!
If you see John Wilkes Booth's co-conspriator John Surratt's Wiki page you will notice that he was found hiding at the Vatican as a Papal attendant after he escaped via the Jesuit Rat Run, then hid in Rome, while his own mother swung on the gallows with Booth's band. Sgt. Dye identified Surratt as the time keeper outside Ford's theater involved in the assassination.
The "pope" supported the South and slavery during the war, as they have never recanted from calling our Republic an "Abomination" They hate free republics and run the Fed.
Obviously, from the comments posted here, many people still don't get it! The Federal Reserve is a parasitic debt-money laundering system that rips off citizens in the process of funding international wars and mischief.
Even though much of the money borrowed and arranged through the government is payed back the INTEREST these private bankers get is ENORMOUS, plus the ability to operate without audit or control avails incredibly evil agendas. It's about Control of the money!
DiLorenzo is trying to keep these dirty secrets hidden, so he plays off the sympathy patriots feel now about "states rights" to seed disinformation and lies. The "Cup of Borgia" in historical context here. If the People of this country only KNEW of all the evils Jesuits created!
Afterward, Lincoln warned the American people:
"The money power preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me, and causes me to tremble for the safety of our country. Corporations have been enthroned, an era of corruption will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed."
This is the REAL Lincoln, who tried to free us all from the Rothschild/Vatican banking cartel that has ruined nations all over the world. The Civil War was not started by Lincoln, it was already raging in Kansas in 1854.
These Johnny hindsight experts have NO idea of what would have happened later if Lincoln would have done as they suggest - Nothing. Grant later said, it was good it didn't come later.
Lincoln knew EXACTLY who was behind the plan to destroy our republic. ROME and the Jesuits. Read "50 years in the Catholic Church" by Fr. Chineguay, who warned Lincoln days before the assassination about plots from the Jesuits. Then take another look at John Surratt, hiding in the Vatican. Get the picture?
They killed JFK too after he tried to re-issue Silver Certificates.
Reply from The Daily Bell
We agree with much of what you write about the Federal Reserve anyway. But DiLorenzo is affiliated with Mises and Lew Rockwell, and there is no evidence from out point of view that Rockwell et. al. are apologists for the "black church." Though we understand that Lew Rockwell is indeed a deeply religious man and believes in the civilizing influence of the Church.
Nor is there evidence that we can find that DiLorenzo is an apologist for nefarious Jesuitical influences in his writing. He has never, that we can see, focused on religious, spiritual or Catholic issues. His writing is focused on political commentary and supports free-markets and free-enterprise within the tradition of Lysander Spooner whom he admires.
As far as defending Lincoln goes, one can make the case, as you do, that he saved the union because the Catholic church had nefarious plans for the US. But it makes more sense to us (in terms of the largest picture) that the South was baited into war by the North (and its banking interests) for purposes of consolidating a more authoritarian union under control of European banking powers. This is exactly what DID happen, we believe, so from our point of view DiLorenzo's perspective is borne out by reality.
Is there a black church, as there is a black nobility and Jewish banking families all linked together in a shadowy power elite? That IS our guess. Also, the Church has very obviously been part of the elite's power grab and has served as a legitimizing influence for the powers-that-be in the past. One could argue that the Church was set up as a way of facilitating transitional elements of the Roman power elite, etc. during the prolonged "fall of Rome."
But this is a far cry from tarring DiLorenzo with a Jesuitical brush and claiming he is some sort of apologist for malevolent influences. His philosophy seems to us to be congruent, his passion for freedom seems to be credible and deeply felt and just because he works at Loyola University Maryland doesn't mean that he is part of some grand Jesuit plot. He is also affiliated with the Mises Institute and with the League of the South and the Abbeville Institute.
There are many currents and counter-currents swirling around seats of great power and we have no doubt there were Catholic and Jesuit intrigues taking place during Lincoln's day, and that they may even have supported the larger European banking intrigues. But hindsight reveals the larger truth: We do not think it was wise for Lincoln to insist on maintaining the union at the cost of millions dead, for one reason or another, within the context of a consolidation that has evidently and obviously given rise to what is rapidly becoming a new global order - of a most authoritarian kind.
The Catholic church has, in fact, always worked within the larger ambit of the power elite, its banking families, etc. It has provided its authority to cementing the legitimacy of the powers-that-be. Religion is a tool of power in many senses, not the driving or leading force. Without the legitimacy of the state, the Church has little real power in fact; it serves as an adjunct to power. These are our thoughts on the matter. You will likely disagree. But thank you for taking the time to write to us.
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Posted by Hugolp on 05/28/10 03:23 AM
@fauxcapitalist, this again... A central bank has to return all its benefits to the government therefore the interest are meaningless, the government is not paying them (or it pays them and then gets them back, which is the same as not paying them).
The only ones giving disinformation are the ones saying that Greenbacks are different than Federal Reserve Notes.
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Posted by FauxCapitalist on 05/27/10 04:28 PM
DiLorenzo asserts that Lincoln backed "a central bank modeled after the Bank of England to pay for it all."
From the Bank of England's own website, from its founding document, the Bank of England Act 1694, it shows it was created as a private central bank, as a corporation with shareholders.
The money that was issued during Lincoln's presidency that is being referred to, United States Notes, were issued directly by the U.S. treasury, and not some central bank, let alone a private one. The Treasury confirms that fact on their own site.
Where is DiLorenzo getting the basis for his claim?
Reply from The Daily Bell
We should not answer for Mr. DiLorenzo, but will forward your query.
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Posted by James Robert on 05/20/10 09:29 PM
Oops. I see the problem. The "plus" signs in the URL - between each word of the book title - do not make it from the feedback box onto the website.
Just go to Click to view link and type in the book title.
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Posted by James Robert on 05/20/10 09:23 PM
Thanks to Dale Caruso for his contribution.
This is the link that got me to The Real Lincoln. It's slightly different from what he posted:
Click to view link Real Lincoln from the Testimony of His Contemporaries&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Posted by StateNational on 05/18/10 09:51 AM
Excellent analysis. Another good book is "The Red Amendment" by L.B. Bork. Google it. It gives an analysis of the way the reconstruction amendment arguably the most devastating - the Fourteen Amendment - is used even today to maintain slaves in their rebellion.
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Posted by Shane on 05/18/10 12:51 AM
"How Much Government Is Necessary?" - Part 1 of the Debate
Click to view link
This dude really opened my eyes.
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Posted by Donald B. on 05/17/10 11:21 PM
Thanks to DB, and Dr. Lorenzo. I read "The Real Lincoln" years ago. I would put it right after "Atlas Shrugged"on the list of books that most influenced me. Growing up in Illinois,"the land of Lincoln", it was what a friend of mine from Texas described as my "Southern Epiphany".
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Posted by Shane on 05/17/10 06:43 PM
SECESSION:
It is hard to understand the mindset that refuses to acknowledge this basic, bedrock American principle.
The American States were born w/an act of secession from England.
The very act of putting the Constitution into effect WITHOUT UNANIMOUS approval of all signatories to the Articles Of Confederation constituted a breach of THAT agreement. In affect, this was also an act of secession. At the moment the 9th State ratified the Constitution, 9 States existed w/i the NEW Union established by it and 4 existed OUTSIDE of it. N. Carolina and Rhode Island actually didn't join this NEW Union until well over a year later.
The act of initially entering the Union--for every State--was VOLUNTARY. Why would exiting be any different?
The anti-secessionists really have very little to back up their position with--outside of FORCE that is.
It is mindboggling that people who accept divorce as a legitimate way to resolve an unsuccessful/failing union between a man and a woman don't accept it between MILLIONS of disparate peoples among entire States...instead preferring that MILLIONS of people be politically dominated by other, remote peoples.
Imagine if a wife were disallowed to divorce from her husband without his consent--regardless of how abusive the marriage was. It would be saying her rights were reliant on his approval of them...which would mean she HAD no enforceable rights. Preposterous isn't it? Somehow the anti-secessionists believe this a valid way to govern political unions between the States.
Better that we ALL be enslaved than SOME remain free I guess.
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Posted by Maverick Muse on 05/17/10 06:29 PM
Lincoln realized his prideful folly begging forgiveness "with malice toward none" from the souls of all slaughtered before he was murdered. And of course there was a conspiracy, his own body guard AWOL and no substitute body guard accompanying them to the theater, no guard at all. Booth most likely got away, some one else's body burned in the barn, since his look alike showed up out West to live happily ever after as those accounts go.
Thomas James DiLorenzo writes constitutionally of the legitimate congressional complaints from the South being economically sabotaged by the North which made the War Between the States happen given Ft. Sumpter's bravura, instead of diplomatic negotiations for peaceful dissolution of slavery prevailing.
Given the 19th Century white supremacy throughout Europe and the USA, it wasn't as if African slaves were the plantation owner's first or second attempt at imposing or even importing cheap labor. That point being, it wasn't as if the South wanted a population of Africans any more than the North was willing to tolerate the Italians or the Irish immigrants, let alone Native American Tribes remaining on original tribal lands as city neighbors. The race card came up following this statement:
"...by orchestrating the murder of 350,000 fellow Americans..." a view supported by James M. McPherson whose scholarship is impeccable, even if his PC ideology is grossly insensitive to reverse discrimination, not to mention his willingness to consign the known descendants of Confederates to be ignorant racists, clarified with a non-apology.
McPherson said: "If I implied that all United Daughters of the Confederacy chapters or Sons of Confederate Veterans chapters or anyone who belongs to those is promoting a white-supremacist agenda, that's not what I meant to say. What I meant to say is that some of these people have a hidden agenda of white supremacy, (which) they might not even recognize they're involved in." Members of the UDC were similarly offended by these comments. The Virginia UDC responded in their newsletter that "Far from apologizing for his baseless accusations of racism, (McPherson) has now added ignorance to the list of sins that we have committed." The group has not announced an end to their boycott."
Frankly, if throwing the word racist around, then at least admit that we all have our own opinions about racism and who is or isn't a racist. It comes in all disguises, and the Ivy League facade is as vain and vicious as anything.
It is the epitome of tacky to smear the South with a monopoly on racism when such exists in its own guise at Princeton, or Martha's Vineyard, or in the Midwest, wherever, against white Southerner males in particular.
So far as Northern sympathizers are concerned, this American War Between the States has never "ended" as those who propagandize promote a never ending victimization parade. Some claim that all Americans with any African heritage are still treated as slaves (premise held by the New Black Panthers and AG Holder or Michelle Obama for example), and further, that any descendants of the Confederacy who are aware of their heritage and honor their family's sacrifice for their State Rights are racist bigots who need to be obliterated in order for feelings to be appropriately PC pacified.
The North has never allowed the cessation of aggression against the South, tagging anyone with an accent as a redneck regardless of the Southerner good manners or ideology. And given the course of Manifest Destiny, Northerners who waited generations for others to "tame" the West and the Southwest before relocating themselves out of the Rust Belt now preach their version of elitism and the virtue of reverse discrimination from sea to shining sea, as if elitism isn't simply another authoritarian means for supremacists to manipulate the population into the new feudal order.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Thanks for this interesting summary.
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Posted by Shane on 05/17/10 03:42 PM
Great to see TJD interviewed by the Bell.
Pop American history is, more or less, a narrative of one lie built on top of another.
Even the story told of the "Founding" should be looked at w/some skepticism. In order to secure "liberty, peace, and prosperity", the so-called "Founders" (ConCon of 1787 was dominated by the Federalist/Hamiltonian political faction) scrapped the Article Of Confederation (in direct contravention to their mandate to only AMEND them) and--in secrecy behind closed doors--came up w/a whole new document (Constitution) which MASSIVELY expanded the power of the central govt. How does one increase liberty by creating BIGGER govt?
As far as DB's question about the South making a huge blunder by firing first: I gotta agree. While, technically, Click to view linkrolina was w/i its rights to expel a now-foreign entity (the USGovt) from its lands by force, it was a very poor move. If Lincoln/North made a huge miscalculation...so did SC/South.
The CSA probably could've preserved its independence by utilizing trench warfare/purely defensive operations/guerilla techniques (all known about at the time), and most importantly of all, realizing it was in an inferior position relative to the North from the start and doing all it could to AVOID armed conflict. However, let's not forget that the CSA also had a govt--and govts very seldom make good choices.
Reply from The Daily Bell
We agree with you!
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Posted by John C. Calhoun on 05/17/10 02:19 PM
Yes, yes, point taken with Whitman. He loved him some Lincoln. As did Carl Sandberg. When Edmund Wilson reviewed Sandberg's biography of Abe in Patriotic Gore, he concluded:
'The cruelest thing that has happened to Lincoln since being shot by Booth was to have fallen into the hands of Carl Sandburg.) Lincoln-loving among the literati is nothing new in the home of the brave. Scribblers got to get their meal ticket punched someway, right?
Yet the DB lumps in the Beats, whose execrable prose and poetry could gag a cat, with the authoritarians! Rabbi Ginzberg (were he still with us) would drop dead of apoplexy to hear such calumny!
For the interests of everyone involved though, read the following and see what Count Leo Tolstoy thought of Lincoln.
Click to view link
Who knows if the story is true or not about Lincoln's effect among the Circassians? But as John Ford once advised: when it comes to truth or the legend, print the legend. The early church fathers probably felt the same way.
Reply from The Daily Bell
We have another difference of opinion with you. Forget the rest of the beats - Jack Kerouac was a great writer.
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Posted by John C. Calhoun on 05/17/10 01:34 PM
Excellent interview as usual by the DB. However, I take umbrage with one statement:
When the full report on its literature is written - academic and otherwise - we believe the 20th century will be found to have been a fount of authoritarian perspectives, some better disguised than others.
It is fairly indisputable as a matter of fact. One can look at almost any grouping of similar books from the era - from history to science fiction to "the Beats" (Burroughs, Ginsberg, etc.) - and discover they are full of works by apologists for the state in one way or another. This is what has made the Internet and the 21st century itself such a blessing from an intellectual standpoint.
All American writers of the 20th century have been apologists for The State? Really? ee cummings? Robinson Jeffers? Edward Abbey? The Southern Agrarians? Albert Jay Nock?
My point is only that hyperbole can lead to sloppy generalizations. American literature is rich with anarchic and libertarian themes that deserve celebration. Whitman: 'Resist much, obey little.'
Interestingly, of the above, Jeffers was educated in Switzerland and Abbey was of Swiss descent.
Reply from The Daily Bell
Oh, come on, John. We never said "all." And when did Walt Whitman become a 20th century poet? (May 31, 1819 " March 26, 1892) And as long as we're on about Whitman (a truly great poet in so many ways) what are to make of this:
O Captain my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weathered every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up"for you the flag is flung"for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribboned wreaths"for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You've fallen cold and dead.
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchored safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
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