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Over the Thanksgiving holiday (decreed by Lincoln in
1863) one neocon Tabloid, National Review,
reprinted Lincoln’s October 3, 1863 proclamation, highlighting
Abe’s cynical reference to "the Most High God . . ." Another neocon Tabloid, The American Spectator, published
the typical sappy, a-historical, fact-free, rhetorical mumbo jumbo about
"Father Abraham" that Harry Jaffa and his fellow Lincoln cultists
are known for.
The references to God in Lincoln’s
Thanksgiving proclamation, like all other such references in his political
speeches, are breathtakingly cynical because of the fact that Lincoln never
became a Christian (according to his wife and his closest friend and law
partner, William Herndon); he never joined a church; rarely ever stepped foot
into one; as a young man wrote an entire book that disputed Scripture;
and was famous for his vulgar stories and language. But he studied the Bible
as a political tool, just as today’s politicians study opinion polls.
Prior to 1863 Lincoln’s references to God and
the Bible in his political speeches were mostly catch phrases and buzz
words ("a house divided cannot stand"). But as more and more fellow
American citizens were murdered by the thousands by his army, and as the war
crimes mounted, Abe stepped up his Biblical lingo. By the time of his second
inaugural he wrote a speech in which he absolved himself of all blame for the
war ("the war [just] came," he said), blaming the whole bloody mess
on God. Presuming to know what was in the mind of God, he theorized that the
Lord was punishing all Americans, North and South, for the sin of slavery. He
did not theorize on why God would not also punish the British, French,
Spanish, and others who were responsible for bringing 95% of all the slaves
to the Western Hemisphere. In other words, his Biblical language was always a
diversion and a cover-up for the war crimes against American civilians (among
other atrocities) that he was micromanaging.
The first sentence of Lincoln’s Thanksgiving
proclamation is a real howler. The year 1863, he said, "has been filled
with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies." What? Healthful
skies?! As of the fall of 1863 there had been several hundred thousand
battlefield casualties, including thousands of men in both armies who died of
yellow fever and other dreaded diseases. There were more than 50,000
casualties in the Battle of Gettysburg alone, just three months earlier.
In the second sentence, Lincoln the non-Christian
claimed that "we" are "prone to forget" that all of those
"healthful skies" come from "the ever watchful providence of
Almighty God." Speak for yourself, Abe!
This is followed by another howler, claiming that
"peace has been preserved with all nations." He apparently forgot
about the Confederate States of America that he was waging total war against.
It gets worse (and funnier). The next thing he says
is that "order has been maintained." Stalin said the same thing
about the Soviet Union. By that time Lincoln had imprisoned thousands of
Northern political dissenters without due process since he illegally
suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus. He had shut down hundreds of "unorderly" opposition newspapers, and deported poor
old Congressman Clement Vallandigham of Dayton,
Ohio, his most outspoken critic in Congress.
As Dean Sprague wrote in Freedom Under Lincoln (p. 299), under Lincoln’s "policy of
oppression," the "entire judicial system was set aside" as
"the laws were silent, indictments were not found, testimony was not
taken, judges did not sit, juries were not impaneled, convictions were not
obtained and sentences were not pronounced. The Anglo-Saxon concept of due
process, perhaps the greatest political triumph of the ages and the best
guardian of freedom, was abandoned."
Three months earlier there had been draft riots in
New York City that one could hardly describe as "orderly." An eye
witness to the riots was Colonel Arthur Fremantle of the British Army, who
wrote the following about the New York City draft riots in his book, Three Months in the Southern
States (p. 302):
The reports of outrages, hangings, and murder, were now
most alarming, the terror and anxiety were universal. All shops were shut;
all carriages and omnibuses had ceased running. No colored man or woman was
visible or safe in the streets or even in his own dwelling. Telegraphs were
cut, and railroad tracks torn up.
Lincolnian "order" was restored when Abe sent 15,000
troops to New York from the just-concluded Battle of Gettysburg. The troops
fired indiscriminately into the draft protesters, killing hundreds, more
likely thousands, of them according to Iver
Bernstein, author of The New York City Draft Riots. (This scene was portrayed in the movie Gangs of New York, where Bernstein worked as an historical consultant
to director Martin Scorcese).
But let’s not let historical facts get in our
way. Let’s follow the neocon lead and swoon
and weep and get chills up our legs over Abe’s Big Lie that
"harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military
conflict."
The notion that there was "harmony" and
"unity" in the Northern states during the war is one of the most
outrageous lies in American history. Historian Ella Lonn
described how Lincoln created "harmony" within the U.S. Army in the
face of massive desertions by literally hundreds of thousands of Northern men
in her book, Desertion During the Civil War. Draftees "were held like veritable prisoners" and
Lincoln’s government "had no compunctions about shooting or
hanging deserters," wrote Lonn. The murder of
deserters achieved Nazi-like efficiency: "A gallows and shooting ground
were provided in each corps and scarcely a Friday passed during the winter of
1863–64 that some wretched deserter did not suffer the death penalty in
the Army of the Potomac. . . . The death penalty was so unsparingly used that
executions were almost daily occurrences. . ." The "method of
execution" was "generally shooting but hanging seems to have been
used occasionally."
The Thanksgiving speech gets even worse. The very
next uttering of Abe’s is that "the laws have been respected and
obeyed." Well, not by Abraham Lincoln, certainly. Even his own attorney
general, Robert Bates, stated that his suspension of Habeas Corpus was
illegal and unconstitutional, as was the suppression of free speech
throughout the North. West Virginia was illegally carved out of Virginia to
form a new slave state as part of the union. And where in the Constitution is
the president permitted to order soldiers to imprison and deport an
opposition member of Congress without any due process? Or rig national
elections and imprison duly-elected members of the Maryland state assembly
without due process? Doesn’t the Constitution require presidents to see
to it that the states have republican forms of government?
Indeed, Lincoln’s invasion of the Southern
states was the very definition of treason under the U.S. Constitution.
Article 3, Section 3 proclaims that: "Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them,
or adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort"
(emphasis added). Treason under the U.S. Constitution consists
"only" in waging war against "them," namely, the free,
independent and sovereign states, plural. Lincoln redefined treason to mean
any criticism by anyone of him or his administration. In fact, he even
said that a man who stands by and says nothing while the war was being
discussed was guilty of "treason."
Lincoln also violated international law and his own military
code by intentionally waging war on American civilians for four years,
killing more than 50,000 of them according to historian Jeffrey Rogers
Hummel. Even pro-Sherman biographer Lee Kennett wrote in his book, Marching Through Georgia (p. 286), that "had the Confederates somehow
won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents
before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified (as
victors generally do) in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union
high command for violation of the laws of war, specifically for waging war
against noncombatants."
All the "great things" that had happened
since he became president, said Abe, were "the gracious gifts of the
Most High God . . ." Therefore, he said, "we" should celebrate
as "the whole American People" to give thanks to God with a national
holiday. This was another very large contradiction: Lincoln never admitted
that secession was legal, therefore, he always considered Southerners to be a
part of "the whole American people" for political purposes. It is
doubtful that a single Southerner, in 1863, would have heeded Abe’s advice
and given thanks for all that he had done for them.
Lincoln concluded his Thanksgiving propaganda speech
with more religious lingo, thanking the Lord for "the full enjoyment of
peace, harmony, tranquility," and, get this
– Union. The Union – always spelled with a capital "U"
– was not just a practical political arrangement created by the
founding generation mostly for foreign policy purposes, as Thomas Jefferson
said it was. It was supposedly divine, the work of God. Lincoln the non-Christian
knew this for sure. It’s what created The Divine Right of Lincoln,
similar to The Divine Right of Kings during the Middle Ages.
This deification of the state echoed the words of
the fanatical New England Unitarian preacher Henry W. Bellows, who worked in
the Lincoln administration as its Sanitary Commissioner and whose son,
Russell, was Robert Todd Lincoln’s Harvard classmate and best friend.
(Lincoln’s son Robert spent the war years "fighting" for good
grades at Harvard). Bellows authored a creepy, totalitarian-sounding book in
1863 entitled Unconditional Loyalty which declared that "the state is indeed
divine, as being the great incarnation of a nation’s rights,
privileges, honor and life" itself." Moreover, "the first and
most sacred duty of loyal citizens" was "to rally round the
president – without question or dispute."
In his new book, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and
Slavery (p. 265), Lincoln cultist Eric Foner
informs us that "it is not surprising that Lincoln seemed to share this
outlook." This "outlook" would have caused George Washington
to reach for his sword and lead another Revolution against another despotic
and dictatorial regime.
Thomas DiLorenzo
Thomas J. DiLorenzo is
professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What
You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How
Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What
It Means for America Today.
Article originally published on www.LewRockwell.com. By authorization
of the author
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