The Real Lincoln

What was the Lost Cause? Dilorenzo answers this question from the perspective of a Southerner which is great material for a novel on the Civil War.

The book is fun because Dilorenzo presents his positions with entertaining gusto. He tries hard to convince the reader that the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with slavery; the South did not provoke war; the Constitution included a right to secede, the South should have been allowed to leave peacefully; antebellum life in the South was prosperous, dignified, and just; slavery was already dying; Robert E. Lee deserved deification, U. S.… show more.

Mass formation psychosis causes people to lose contact with reality. Case-in-point: the apotheosis of Abraham Lincoln. The author presents a cogent case against the 16th president’s policies of “internal improvements,” high tariffs, and a national central bank (the failed and rejected Hamiltonian policies of the Whig party and Henry Clay). Lincoln insisted upon instituting mercantilism—a strong central government that dispenses special privileges to wealthy and influential corporations, who then support the central government, contravening the Constitution. In a reality stranger than fiction, he killed an estimated 620,000-750,000 Americans in a war upon the Southern states and their right… show more.