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Summary: Thomas DiLorenzo is biased and ignorant of U.S. history
Review: I have been studying President Abraham Lincoln for nearly forty (40) years and have a firm understanding of the times in which Lincoln lived in this life. Thomas DiLorenzo does not have a thorough understanding of Abraham Lincoln and ignores much evidence that proves DiLorenzo wrong and inaccurate. It seems that Thomas DiLorenzo had his ideas and his slant on Lincoln and Civil War times decided on before writing his book. I do NOT recommend DiLorenzo's book. If you want to read ACCURATE information about President Abraham Lincoln, I suggest that you start with LINCOLN by David Herbert Donald, WITH MALICE TOWARD NONE by Stephen Oates, and ABRAHAM LINCOLN: A BIOGRAPHY by Benjamin Thomas.
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Summary: Misrepresents Lincoln's Actions. Slavery was South's Issue
Review: This is not good history. Look for an award-winning book by a great historian detailing the actual events, instead.
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Summary: And Now It Can Be Told
Review: The Real Lincoln - Thomas J. DiLorenzo - Non-fiction that pulls away the curtin from the "great emancipator", just as Dorothy did from the Wizard of Oz, revealing a scheming, ambitious tyrant unlike the popular portrait taught in schools. History, they say, is written by the winners, and no case of this could be more true than the background and rationale of the American Civil War, which, it turns out, really was the war of Northern aggression. For those northerners who instigated and prosecuted the war between the states, even the ending of slavery was a cynical part of their plan to seize control of the country and its government for their own mercenary purposes. Read this book along with Alexander Hamilton by Willard Sterne Randall, which is really the backstory to the Civil War, and you will understand American history and modern America as never before.
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Summary: biased
Review: This book is biased and one-sided. Just one example, Pres. Lincoln did say: "My paramount objective on this struggle is to save the Union; it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it. I say nothing about my well-known desire that all men everywhere be free."I've always liked this quote. It gives a glimpse of Lincoln's goodness as a human being, devotion as a statesman to the constitution, and his constitutional objective, which is to preserve the Union. It also shows him wrestling with public opinion. He was afraid that if he issued the Emancipation too early half of the Union Army would throw down their guns and three more states would rise up. He was truly walking on political eggshells and being pulled in five directions at once. Dilorenzo repeats the quote, takes out the last sentence: "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union; it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves I would do it." Has a much different ring to it now without any historical context behind it. Multiply this by 300 and you pretty much get this book. Not recommended.
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Summary: Let's quit the name calling and deal with the issues!
Review: I cannot stand the insults that are being thrown at Thomas DeLorenzo. Why all the name calling!?! Is there not someone out there that will graciously say that they believe he is wrong rather than just call him a liar? Anyways...
I would have to agree with DiLorenzo on this issue. He clearly presents the facts and quotes Lincoln on seamingly every page.
I honestly don't see how he can be refuted. When Lincoln says, and I quote: "We want them [the new territories]for the homes of free white people." I have to take what he says as his oppinion.
When he says, and I quote again: ""Free them and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this... We cannot then make them equals." I have to take this as his view on blacks. I cannot take it any other way.
When many newspapers in the North say like Buffalo Daily Courier said, the "The affair at Fort Sumter... has been planned as a means by which the war feeling in the North should be intensified." AND... The Jersey City American Standard wrote on April 12, 1861, that "there is a madness and ruthlessness" in Lincoln's behavior "which is astounding... this unarmed vessel... is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South, which act by the pre-determination of the government is to be the pretext for letting loose the horrors of war." Do I not also have to take this at face value? Or am I to just sweep it under the carpet and ignore it? This seems to be what the opponents of this book would like. I am sorry, I would love to admire Lincoln for saving the union and freeing the slaves but I cannot with any clear conscience and conviction do such a thing.
What Lincoln has done adn said deserves to be shown and not swept under the rug! I would recomend this book to anyone willing to read what Licoln realy said. If you are honest with the evidence you will end up, as I have, agreeing with DeLorenzo. It is undeniable that the war was over slavery. Think logicaly. Why would all of the Southern men stand up and fight for an institution that only a quarter of them were a part of? Would they fight and die for it! I most certainly think not!
Finaly why would Karl Marx write Lincoln and congraduate him on winning the election for his second term if Lincloln was so great? (You can verify this at the Marx and Engles Internet Archive if you like.)
I hope this has piqued your interest.
This book is definantly worth reading!
Justin Georgeff (17) {All quotes from The Real Lincoln)
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Summary: The truth about our tyranical government and Lincoln
Review: This book is a master piece! it reveals what the history books have lied about for years. Lincoln was not a good man, he lied cheated contradicted himself and caused thousands of patriotic americans to die a sad and terrible death. he is responsible for creating the big evil government that we have today
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Summary: lies, quotes taken out of context, more lies
Review: 0 stars. DiLorenzo is a nerdy economist posing as a horrible historian. This is godawful stuff. Richard Ferrier, and many others, have already debunked this book as a load of nonsense, sloppy scholarship, lies, quotes taken out of context, etc. so I won't even bother. DiLorenzo should stick to what he knows -- mid-19th century American history and politics is something he does not have a firm (or even a loose) grasp on. Nice try.
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Summary: Something many of the reviewers are confused about
Review: 'The South started the war by firing on Fort Sumter' After legally seceeding from the Union, (Yes, it was legal, read the Constitution, find where it says the Federal government has the right to use force to keep States in the Union. Check out the Tenth Amendment. People in the States voted to join the Union, they could vote to leave.) and offering to pay the Union for their former forts, Lincoln refused to withdraw Union troops from Fort Sumter, which was now in another sovereign territory, and tried to resupply it with munitions.
If another country established a military base in the U.S. today, and tried to arm it against the wishes of the U.S., would stopping such a thing be equivalent to starting a war? Anyway, a good book, it uses lots of Lincoln's own writings, and those who worked with him. A great exposition of Lincoln for the big-business whore that he was.
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Summary: A new look that disappoints
Review: This book is not worth reading. It distorts the historical record about the reasons for secession. It also misleads and distorts the facts about Lincoln's motivations. It calls him a racist when his actual views on race were very complex and more advanced than most of the people of his time. The book is worse than useless because of the many distortions and misrepresentations.
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Summary: Revealing and outstanding
Review: Professor DiLorenzo is an iconoclast. He destroys two myths, one that Lincoln was a good president while he was merely a good party man who did not care about the number of casualties and the amount of damage he produced (2 % of the population and 40% of the nation's economy!). After all, he managed to keep his party in power for a quarter of a century, to destroy the South and with it free trade and capitalism, to annihilate what was left of the Native Americans, to declass economic slaves into human trash ready for resettlement, to put the US on the path of aggressive expansionism, to produce in the federal state a new monster. The second myth Professor DiLorenzo destroys is democracy. He demystifies the most exploitative, stupid, and devastating ideology the human mind has ever figured out. This collectivist stupidity called democracy is responsible for mass murder of historical dimension, enormous destruction of property, blindness and hatred that pales the Islamic Fundamentalists. Lincoln makes me think of Voltaire's word applied to democracy: "The first divine was the first rogue who met the first fool." The greatest fools are those who applaud their slaveholders who keep telling them that there is no better world than the democratic world.
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