The nobility and righteousness of Lincoln's war is a central element of the US government's authoritarian mythology. But a critical examination of his legacy reveals something far more dastardly and destructive. Whether it was his persecution of his political opposition or his merciless destruction of the south, Lincoln re-imagined and manufactured the "union" out of thin air and subsequently drenched it in blood. That is the authoritarian paradigm that Americans have been living under ever since. And that is why Lincoln's legacy is easily the most odious to liberty and to federalism in our country's history.Three Reasons Not to Like Abraham Lincoln
by Thomas Landess
By way of prologue, let me say that all of us like the Lincoln whose face appears on the penny. He is the Lincoln of myth: kindly, hum*ble, a man of sorrows who believes in malice toward none and char*ity toward all, who simply wants to preserve the Union so that we can all live together as one people. The Lincoln on the penny, had he lived, would have spared the South the ravages of Reconstruction and ushered in the Era of Good Feeling in 1865. The fact that this mythic Lincoln was killed is surely the ultimate tragedy in a tragic era. Indeed, the most that any Southerner could say in behalf of the slayer of that Lincoln was what Sheldon Vanauken reported hearing from an old-fashioned Virginian: “Young Booth, sir, acting out of the best of motives, made a tragic blunder.” But the Lincoln on the penny, the mythic Lincoln, did not exist. Instead a very real man, a political absolutist with enormous human weaknesses, for a time held the destiny of the nation in his oversized palm. So why do we dislike this Lincoln so much? There are many reasons, and here, just for starters, are three good ones:
I. Lincoln was the inventor of a new concept of “Union,” one that implied a strong centralized government and an “imperial presidency,” a Union that now dominates virtually every important aspect of our corporate life as Americans.
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II. Lincoln’s skillful use of egalitarian rhetoric has given Northern and New South historians the argument that the War Between the States was fought solely over the question of slavery rather than over a number of interrelated issues, none of which in itself could have led to Secession and War.
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III. Lincoln was responsible for the War Between the States, a conflict in which more than 600,000 Americans were killed for no good purpose.
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