I give many books to others as gifts or sometimes just to help inform them on my viewpoints. The book I’ve given out the most (and one that has caused the greatest deal of struggle for the reader) is Thomas DiLorenzo’s The Real Lincoln. I was born and I live in the Land of Lincoln: the state of Illinois. Lincoln was born here and started his political career here. We even have him on our car license plate!

There are literally thousands of books that promote Lincoln as the finest President. More often than not they focus on how Lincoln supposedly ended slavery, won a war against terrorists, and provided for the democracy that we live under today. Unfortunately for most readers (and students), Lincoln was not a great man, and his politics were likely the cause of the great tyranny we live under today.

DiLorenzo’s book is now available in paperback form, but I own both copies. He dives deep into Lincoln’s past, producing a wealth of information focusing on Lincoln’s own words through his life, his own letters to others, and the beginnings of the Republican Party. Lincoln was first and foremost a tutor of Hamilton and Clay, and a hardcore believer in Clay’s American System. Clay was a Whig (as were Hamilton and Lincoln) and the Whigs believed in a huge central government that taxed some producers to pass the money on to “internal improvements” — or corporate welfare as we know it.

Lincoln also hated the black race, and he believed that the country should expel all slaves and free blacks and ship them to Africa or Haiti. When he ran for President, he admitted that he had no desire to end slavery in the South. The reason for the War between States, according to DiLorenzo and the facts he digs up, was to tax the Southern producers so that Lincoln could give his friends in the North money as corporate welfare.

Even worse, Lincoln destroyed the Constitutional limits on the President by actually jailing hundreds of anti-war advocates and news reporters. He threatened newspaper owners with jail if they spoke out against the war. Lincoln went so far as expelling a Congressman from the U.S. because of his anti-war views.

For those unfamiliar with Lincoln and the Republican Platform, DiLorenzo’s book is an eye-opener, one that has battled years of attacks and has come out relatively unscathed. I highly recommend this book not just for the politically inclined, but the apolical and even high school students. Lincoln’s actions must be brought to light, and we have to see that much of what he believed in is now part of our society and our government. The actions that are most hated by those with libertarian or anarcho-capitalist beliefs may have started with Lincoln, and most praise this tyrant because of the slavery issue, which the book proves was one of Lincoln’s worst accomplishments. Every other civilized country in the world ended slavery because of industrialization, and only the U.S. ended it in a war.