Rating: 
Summary: History with application to today's world
Review: Finally someone has written a book compiling all the dirty little secrets of the "Civil" War and "Honest" Abe into one volume! I'd picked up much of this information in bits and pieces over the years; it was nice to see it all put together into a coherent whole. Plus, I learned a few more details I didn't know, such as the fact that preachers were arrested for not offering prayers for Lincoln and that a congressman was deported for daring to speak out against Lincoln's policies. If you think that the war was fought to end slavery, that Lincoln was a racial egalitarian, that the South started the war, and that Lincoln's policies were all perfectly within the accepted bounds of legality and constitutionality, don't read this book without a defibrillator handy. It's guaranteed to raise your blood pressure unless you are willing to accept that what you've been told all your life by the government-run schools and the media is false.Those conservatives who admire Lincoln ought to consider the fact that without him we most likely would never have had an FDR, an LBJ, or a Clinton. Lincoln set the precedent for an all-powerful executive and for the total disregard of the Constitution which has led to the all-encompasing federal government we have today. Had the right of secession (accepted from the time of the Revolution--itself an act of secession--to the time of the War Between the States by virtually all Americans) not been destroyed by brute force, the federal government would today be forced to think twice before usurping the people's freedom, and scoundrels would find "public service" that much less enticing. This book is also useful in pointing out the ways in which wartime measures, supposedly instituted to "preserve freedom," end up costing average citizens. Lincoln, much as the current administration has done, instituted military tribunals to try those deemed "enemies of the people." The tribunals ended up being extremely unfair, and many people were imprisoned, hanged, or shot entirely without warrant. (Muslim Americans might find an ominous parallel with the case of the Sioux Indians, who protested the federal government's reneging on its pledge to pay for their land and ended up losing 39 people to the hangman's noose after practically nonexistent military trials--a number reduced from around 300 only because of Lincoln's fear of generating enmity between the Union and Europe and thus of European entry into the war on behalf of the Confederacy.) Those who value freedom would do well to consider these precedents before signing on to the current wartime infringments of constitutional rights.
Rating: 
Summary: defaming our greatest president.
Review: I remember growing up in the South and hearing the claim that Lincoln was a tyrant. I have never understood it, and I still don't understand it. First, folks the civil war was over slavery. You don't believe me? Read the different declarations of secession. They all say the same thing: they're going to take away our slaves! The only one that didn't say that was South Carolina. They pretended to care about states rights, but the funny thing is that every state's right and every federal power, they supported, supported slavery. Name one pro-states-rights or federal power position that South Carolina took that did not support slavery. You can't do it. So the war was triggered by slavery. Now at first, he fought for Union only. This is typical of Lincoln. Lincoln hated slavery everywhere in America, but he began with slavery in the territories. This is what McPherson calls his "hedgehog" nature. He focuses on one thing, ONE THING, that he thinks will gain the largest coalition. So he thought Union was the answer. Then people like Stevens agitated and got him to change it over to a war against slavery, all out. The claim that the war was unnecessary is ludicrous. The South submitted to an election in 1860. Losing the election, they said, well, since we did not win, we will secede. They did not say that Lincoln was not the rightful president. And if the concern was that he would violate the constitution, why not wait until he actually violated it, instead of seceding before he was even inaugurated? Well the answer is simple. This was not about the constitution or anything else noble. This was about the realization that the slave power was out of power-that the North, comprising the vast majority of the American population, was finally going to get a Northern Man with Northern Principles into office. And then Lincoln, horror of horrors, would start to build a southern republican party and that meant that slavery was the road to destruction. Now some people claim that the election of Lincoln was an act of aggression--hence, "The War of Northern Aggression." Can you believe that free people would utter such stupidity? That it is somehow an act worthy of war for the majority to pick whomever they want as president? How would you feel, for instance, if China said in 2004, "If you vote for Bush, we will go to war." Would it be aggression then on our part to vote for whomever we want to be president? The truth is that before the Civil War, American politics was unnaturally dominated by the slave interest. Dilorenzo apparently pays no attention to gross violations of the democratic principle, such as the caning of Charles Sumner-effectively denying the people of Massachusetts 1/2 of their voice in the senate for over 3 years. The election of Lincoln was designed to be an overthrow of that slave power. It was designed to be a test, to see if the South could stand losing for once. They could not, and the North fought with them, at first to vindicate the democratic principle. Then it shifted to slavery, because they saw a need for lasting change; they saw slavery as the trigger and the root of the problem and they believed that if it remained, that strife would just continue. As for the perennial claims of central government, all they did after the civil war was take away the ability of states to oppress their own citizens. How on earth is that tyranny? Wow, now the states will have to give you a trial before it kills you... how horrible! And now the states will have to treat all people equally! Oh no! And then black people will have the right to vote; "there goes the neighborhood!" How it is tyranny over you to free another person only makes sense if you think it is a white man's country or somethign goofy like that. In order to believe Dilorenzo's thesis, you have to believe pretty much everyone in America was lying, and that so were all the historians. Oh but HE and only HE can figure it out. Idiocy sheer idiocy. And if Lincoln were alive... well first he would be saying, "Help! I am trapped in a coffin!" Lol. But second, he would go to court and sue you for libel.
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Summary: Hard Facts about a Dirty War
Review: These are the types of historical facts generally only seen in private/home schools in America. I urge all Americans, especially African-Americans, who have been taught in the public school system, to get a copy of this book, and begin your journey in search of truth.
Americans think that they are free because they have no reference point, and because they have been told this, over and over, since early childhood. Learning of the freedoms lost, and never regained, during this tragedy of epic proportions will only incite the reader to further investigation, and eventually, to political action.
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Summary: The Real Lincoln Indeed!
Review: This book is easy to read, yet explains in plenty of detail, the truth about the man so many have worshiped for so long. No great emancipator or constitutionalist was he, but a great enslaver (of all americans) and centralist. Politically, this man was Alexander Hamilton in the extreme who waged a bloody savage war against not only soldiers but civilians of the Southern Confederacy, who from Thomas Jefferson to Jefferson Davis had been battling Lincoln's centralist mentality since Alexander Hamilton in 1787. This book should be required reading for every student in High School.
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Summary: Unique analysis on Lincoln.
Review: This book is what has been needed for too long. It should be required reading by every High School Senior. Though the book is fairly long it is pretty quick reading and DiLorenzo documents all of the facts he presents and explains them in sufficient detail. Most of the critical reviews I have seen of this book resort to little more than anti-South name calling rather than trying to refute DiLorenzo's arguments. Republican party of today, that stands for less government, state and local control, and free enterprise, wrongly pride themselves as being "The party of Lincoln" and this book explains why.
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Summary: Lincoln Exposed!!!
Review: The Real Lincoln finally exposes the truth about this TYRANT!! My ancestors passed along their own opinions about this horrible man and no one believed them - we had all been brainwashed by revisionist history! Mr. DiLorenzo has thoroughly researched and explained in a logical and understandable manner how Lincoln and his administration corrupted the Constitution! This book should be required reading in all American History classes. This would balance out the "Lincoln Myth" that has perpetuated for 140 years!
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Summary: Excellent!
Review: Rather than go into a lengthy detailed analysis, I will simply give my opinion. I thought this was an outstanding book. One that everyone should read. I know that Lincoln apologists will dislike and attempt to discredit the book.
It is primarily those of Confederate ancestry who have ever heard BOTH SIDES of the story of 'Lincoln's War'. It is so refreshing to read something other than the victor's version, attempting to whitewash what they did.
This does tell of the real Lincoln. He is the kind of person that Joseph Stalin and Ho Chi Minh would admire. You think after all these years, the United States could finally be honest about that period of history.
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Summary: Mr. Dilorenzo makes an excellent case
Review: A product of public schools, I grew up believing that Lincoln was one of the most honest and moral humans to have walked this earth. For about 25 years, starting in my elementary school years, Lincoln was by far my favorite president. I was so inspired by Lincoln that I memorized and recited the Gettysburg Address before my seventh grade class. About 5 years ago I stumbled across a copy of Lincoln's first inaugural address. I could not believe that this was written by the Lincoln that I revered. Honest Abe, the Great Emancipator must have meant those words in some other context. So I started searching history for the justifying context. The more I searched, the more I learned that the prevailing image of Lincoln is far from reality. Mr. Dilorenzo's book, "The Real Lincoln," confirms what I've learned about Lincoln and adds a host of facts that I did not know. Mr. Dilorenzo demonstrates that contrary to what we've been taught, Lincoln was not a Statesman. His book reveals Lincoln's true nature, that of a calculating politician willing to risk thousands of lives to attain his political objectives. Mr. Dilorenzo has done an excellent job of assembling the facts and making his case. Unlike many books about Lincoln, this book is not filled with conjecture; he has included more than enough references for the reader to check his facts. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the truth about the man who paved the path for the modern bloated Federal Government.
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Summary: Lots of heat; even less light
Review: Much of what the author states regarding Lincoln's politics and actions is not new--just the vehemence with which he presents it and the ameliorating facts he chooses to omit. In the name of preserving the Union, Lincoln did lots of things that would cause a civil libertarian to shudder, and I will even grant that the War between the States was something Lincoln arranged. But Lincoln gave ample explanations for his decision to forcibly preserve the union, some very legalistic (and I think weak), but most simply practical. The idea that two countries were going to peaceably occupy our present continental space, one banning and one condoning slavery, is ludicrous. After 1861, each side would have rushed to place the territories due West under its flag. These territories were more tinderboxes like Kansas, filled with agitating free-staters and slave-staters, that would have descended into violent guerilla warfare over the decision of whether to join the Union or the Confederacy. As Lincoln realized, it was impossible the the fighting in these territories wouldn't eventually draw the Union and the Confederacy into direct combat. But he knew what his resources and those of the South were in 1861, and that the North could win. If the North waited, he could not be sure. The author truly fails to understand the political and emotional dynamics of the times. He takes little notice of the what was happening around the U.S. at the time that affected American feelings of solidarity. Canada was jittery every time we moved, fearful we were going to forcibly seize their provinces for ourselves, and our trust of the English in Canada was not very high, either. To the South, the French were trying to install an Austrian as the Emperor of Mexico. We had a Monroe Doctrine that said they weren't supposed to be there, but not the armies or navies to back it up. An increasingly rich and inustrialized Europe was a much unwanted presence in the Americas (as far as we were concerned) and the idea that we would split ourselves in two while they were operating to our north and south truly worried many people's sense of security. Maybe to most farmers the idea of an amicable split was satisfactory; but not to anyone hooked into the evolving economy (traders, merchants and financiers) and worried about European encoachment here and domination of markets overseas. Yes, the emancipation of the slaves was not the first priority of the Union states, and certainly not Lincoln's, but the preservation of slavery always was the first priority of the Confederacy. It is about all their legislatures and special conventions talked about before they voted to secede. While the North may not have been uniformly abolitionist, the South clearly perceived the North as determined to end slavery as it slowly gained supremacy of the three branches of government in Washington--and likely to do so without concern for how it would effect the Southern economy. In fact, by the late 1850s, they had personalized the slavery debate, and felt that most Northerners would simply love to see the Southern aristocracy wallowing in the dirt. The states' rights issues with which the author deals at length have some merit, but were hardly uniform around the country. Progressing from north to south, these opinions were of small concern to great concern after the election of Lincoln. It would have been useful for the author to inquire why people in the north were unalarmed with Lincoln's election vis-a-vis their states' right--I don't think people in Massachusetts would have allowed Lincoln to violate their constitutional rights willy-nilly--while the leadership in the south ran to the opposite extreme almost immediately. But that line of inquiry takes us back to the real--as opposed to the sometimes stated or self-serving--reasons the South suddenly wanted out of the Union, returns us to the moral debate (which the South clearly had the losing end of) and the larger concern of the country's future that Lincoln was trying to prepare for as president of ALL Americans; and so does not fit well with the author's predetermined argument. Lincoln's problem in dealing with the South, with which the author seems totally uniterested, was that he had no economic model to offer to the its leaders of what a post-slavery South would be like. Most Southerners did not own slaves or directly require their presence to earn their (mostly lower-class) livelihoods. Their attachment to slavery was subject to pursuasive argument. But the upper classes owned slaves and did need them, for no other consistent, large labor force was available to them in the subtropical climates of the Deep South. The plantations were still, at that time, the biggest money-makers in the lower states. Unfortunately, the technology that would have allowed them to dispense with slave labor was decades away. No one in the North had an answer to the Southerner's economic future if slavery was abolished, and the heat being generated by the moral problem of slavery's existence in North America would not wait until that technology arrived. Lincoln's greatness was that he had a vision of the United States after the unavoidable conflict was over; very few at the time did. And I strongly disagree that Reconstruction under Lincoln would have turned out much the same. (He had pretty much given up the idea of colonizing ex-slaves in Africa by the end of the war.) The South maintained its weakened economy by making sure blacks could not enter the rest of society, but were a trapped pool of labor for the larger farms and industries to exploit. I think Lincoln would have been the first to have seen the abuse and moved against it. But as he himself often reflected, the price of ending slavery would probably be his own life, and the blueprint for re-unification he left behind was incomplete and only weakly pursued by his party. All in all, the author, who is working in one of the most interesting periods of American history, has abandoned himself to broad strokes and narrow arguments that let him play giant-killer. Read it if you enjoy spending time with a self-infatuated crank.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Analysis
Review: This book not only gives a detailed account of the political motivations that prompted Lincoln to make war--not only on the people of the South, but also on the Constitution he was sworn to uphold--but also gives truly insightful economic analysis that is left behind in most books concerning the War for Southern Independence. DiLorenzo does an excellent job of laying the historical framework for the type of central state that Lincoln wanted to (and ultimately did) bring into place in the United States, shredding permanently the government set into place originally by the founding fathers. Those who have been taught to believe that Lincoln was a "good president" are in for a rude awakening, as DiLorenzo, through excellent research, exposes this view as the myth it truly is. Anyone who reads this book with an open mind will come away enlightened by the experience. I believe this book should be required reading in US history classes.
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