Breaking the Lincoln Myth Before It Breaks America
Americans now worship presidential power instead of constitutional limits because of Lincoln's precedent.
Abraham Lincoln sits in hallowed stone silence on the National Mall, revered as the savior of the Union and the liberator of the enslaved. Schoolchildren recite the soft spoken words of the 16th president year after year, reading carefully chosen quotations that reinforce a singular narrative that is meant to subtly deify the man. What they’re not told—what most Americans never learn—is that this version of Lincoln was built for veneration, not understanding.
The real Lincoln, as painstakingly documented by acclaimed (and often wrongly derided) economist Thomas DiLorenzo in The Real Lincoln, Lincoln Unmasked, and The Problem with Lincoln, was not a secular saint. He was a shrewd politician who exploited racial prejudices, expanded executive power to dangerous extremes, and ignited a war that left over 620,000 dead. His legacy is less about emancipation and more about centralization—of power, money, and myth.
Begin with Lincoln’s racial views, which have been almost entirely scrubbed from the popular public narrative. In multiple public speeches, Lincoln affirmed that he did not support political or social equality for Black Americans. “I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes,” he told a crowd in Charleston, Illinois, in 1858. “There is a physical difference between the white and black races,” he added, “which will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality.” These weren’t offhand remarks. They were campaign lines, crafted to secure the votes of Northern whites who opposed slavery but also opposed Black citizenship.
Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist. As DiLorenzo shows, he fought against slavery’s expansion only to protect white labor and preserve the Union—not because he believed in racial justice. In Illinois, he supported laws that banned Black migration and endorsed the deportation of freed slaves. He managed the Illinois Colonization Society, which used taxpayer money to remove free Black residents from the state. Even as president, Lincoln pushed for colonization schemes in Central America, the Caribbean and Africa. He supported the idea of voluntary exile. His vision of “freedom” was one that removed Black people from American society altogether.
Then there’s the Emancipation Proclamation….the document most cited as proof of Lincoln’s moral greatness. But as DiLorenzo argues, it was a military tactic, not a humanitarian act. Lincoln admitted this fact in private. It freed only those slaves in areas under Confederate control, where Lincoln had no authority, and it specifically exempted slave-holding areas loyal to the Union like Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. Secretary of State William Seward quipped that it freed those “where we cannot reach them” and left them enslaved where the Union army could have liberated them. Even Lincoln admitted the proclamation lacked legal basis outside of military necessity.
While the public was sold a crusade for liberty, the administration waged a brutal assault on civil liberties. Lincoln suspended habeas corpus nationwide, arrested thousands without trial, and shut down hundreds of newspapers that criticized his policies. He even ordered the military arrest and deportation of Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham, a vocal critic of conscription and the newly imposed income tax. In Lincoln Unmasked, DiLorenzo reminds readers that these actions weren’t necessary for wartime security—they were intended to silence dissent and consolidate control.
When immigrants in New York City protested the draft, angry that they were being conscripted into a war they didn’t support, Lincoln sent troops to suppress the uprising. Over one hundred civilians were killed. This was not an isolated incident, but part of a pattern. Lincoln wielded power with authoritarian confidence, and mainstream academic historians have often praised him for it. Historian Clinton Rossiter, writing decades later, called him “a great dictator” who demonstrated “amazing disregard for the Constitution.” That was meant as a compliment. Countless popular historians and curricula have followed in the same verse.
One of my favorite historical figures and acclaimed abolitionist Lysander Spooner wrote of Lincoln after the war, "All these cries of having 'abolished slavery,'... 'saved the country,'... are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats..."
The war also served as a vehicle for Lincoln’s long-standing economic agenda. For years, he had backed Whig policies that Southern opposition had blocked—high tariffs, federal subsidies, a national bank, and infrastructure programs favoring Northern industries. Once the Southern states seceded and their congressional representatives were gone, Lincoln implemented his entire wish list. The Morrill Tariff nearly doubled import duties. The National Banking Acts centralized monetary power. The Pacific Railway Acts handed vast sums and land to railroad corporations with political connections. None of this was new. These were the same policies Lincoln had championed since the 1830s. War gave him the pretext to enact them.
Outside the United States, slavery ended without civil war pr mass bloodshed. Britain, Denmark, Sweden, France, Mexico, and much of Latin America all abolished slavery through compensation or gradual emancipation. Even Northern states, including New York, phased out slavery over decades. DiLorenzo points out that the South could have followed the same path. But peaceful emancipation would not have allowed Lincoln to restructure the Union on federalist terms or to ram through a new economic order.
Another dark chapter ignored in textbooks and media is Lincoln’s role in the largest mass execution in American history. In 1862, after the U.S. government defaulted on treaty obligations to the Santee Sioux, who faced starvation, a violent uprising ensued. Lincoln reviewed the cases of hundreds of Native Americans sentenced to death and approved 39 executions. The trials had been a joke. Some lasted under ten minutes. In return for his supposed clemency and mercy—he had been originally urged to execute hundreds—Lincoln promised Minnesota officials he would remove all Native Americans from the state and send millions in federal funds to its treasury. These events are rarely taught, but they speak volumes.
Why does this matter now? Because the Lincoln myth teaches Americans to revere concentrated power when it is cloaked in righteous language or serves the ends of the side you are on, Every modern president seeking unchecked authority invokes Lincoln. Woodrow Wilson jailed war critics and cited Lincoln. Franklin Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans and pointed to Lincoln throughout his New Deal expansion of federal power. George W. Bush’s legal team cited Lincoln to justify indefinite detention among other atrocities. Barack Obama named Lincoln as inspiration for drone strike policy. President Trump and his legal team now likewise turn to Lincoln to justify the unilateral actions that would appall the founding generation. Trump to his credit has not yet invoked Lincoln to justify mindless foreign policies that have plagued America and led to forever wars and widespread corruption since the end of the second world war. When power expands under the cover of moral emergency and crisis, Lincoln is the go-to precedent.
This column isn’t about re-litigating the Civil War. It’s about recognizing how myth distorts our understanding of liberty, power, and government. DiLorenzo’s work doesn’t aim to lionize the Confederacy….it aims to dismantle the falsehood that Lincoln preserved the founding principles. In truth, he rewrote the rules of the game. He built the imperial presidency. He Paved the way for the modern administrative leviathan now 35 trillion dollars in debt. He conditioned Americans to cheer for executive decrees if they were wrapped in noble rhetoric or they serve the side they happen to be on.
The republic was not built on myths. It was built on checks and balances, on distributed power and individual rights. That republic died in 1861 for the most part and was replaced by an empire that persists today with a facade of justice and veneer of founding principles. A citizenry that worships power rather than restrains it is one step from servitude. Lincoln’s legacy, when examined in full, does not strengthen our institutions. It weakens the very constitutional principles he claimed to defend.
History should illuminate, not indoctrinate. Until Americans are willing to confront the uncomfortable truths about Lincoln(and other myths they’ve been taught), they will remain vulnerable to the same arguments that dismantled liberty the first time—next time, without even realizing it’s happening.