Fighting the State
columnist: Edward Townes

Topic: U.S. History
The Worst President in American History

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Who was our worst leader and why, from a revisionist point of view.

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by Edward Townes
(Libertarian)
Sunday, December 30, 2007

Was Abraham Lincoln, without question. Worse than Bush Jr, FDR, Wilson, Carter, Nixon, all of them, pale in comparison to the grotesque and permanent damage Lincoln achieved.

This probably seems odd to your average American whose Statist education taught them precisely the opposite, that Abraham Lincoln was one of the best presidents we've ever had. This mainly stems from the American obsession with oppression, victim-culture, and guilt (but it is also in part because Lincoln centralised power in the US and there are a few powerful people who like that very much). Because of this obsession, they concentrate solely on the fact that Lincoln ended slavery in the South (not in the North, he allowed some pockets to continue after the war). Ending slavery is a virtuous thing to do of course, but Lincoln deserves zero credit for two reasons; 1. His motives were not what people assume, and 2. The cost was catastrophic and completely unnecessary.

1. Lincoln freed the slaves for reasons that have nothing to do with a moral objection to slavery. In fact, in debates before the war he demonstrated that his views on slavery were not unusually moral for society at that time, he even defended slavery. When the Civil War started he saw an opportunity to gain European support (all of whom had abolished slavery by that time) by making slavery one of the themes of the war. This is the main reason he involved slavery at all. After the Civil War he saw another opportunity, in that he could free the slaves and give them 2/3 of a vote so that he could get re-elected, which is precisely what happened. Lincoln's emancipation of the slaves in the South was entirely opportunistic and was not motivated at all by any moral position that Lincoln held.

2. The cost. Was staggering. Hundreds of thousands dead, trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars have been lost since due to the consequences of Lincoln. Where to start really... ok, chronologically;

a) The Civil War was not fought over slavery. The Civil War was started because the Southern states tried to exercise their constitutional right to secede from the United States. Secession means that as a last resort, if a state feels it is being violated by the Federal government, then it can withdraw from the Union. It is the ultimate vestige of states rights, and it is no coincidence that since it was destroyed by Lincoln the Federal government has gotten progressively more and more abusive and unconstitutional. The South tried to secede from the US because the North was imposing oppressive economic controls over the South by doing things such as forcing all Southern goods to be exported via the North and excessively taxed. This had nothing to do with slavery and the North was utterly aggressive.

b) During the Civil War Lincoln did things that makes Bush's Patriot Act look like a joke. He suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned thousands and thousands of American citizens without trial for dissent, shut down all media companies that didn't support him, executed citizens without trial, and many other horrifically vile insults to American values. His generals systematically leveled town after town in the South, ensuring the total destruction of their economy, which to this day they have not fully recovered from. His war killed 650,000 Americans, which amounted at that time to 10% of the entire male population. By far the most devastating war in America's history in terms of human costs. Conscription was the order of the day, and unless you could pay $350, which in today's money is probably somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars, your son was sent to die for Lincoln's war.

c) After the Civil War there were 12 years of "reconstruction" which, obviously, had nothing to do with reconstruction. It was basically total tyranny over the South. Lincoln then sent his war experienced generals west to practice the same tactics against the American Indians, and literally exterminated them. I'm not kidding. Abraham Lincoln heavily subsidised the railway companies building west at that time, supporting his close friends at great economic expense to the rest of America who was stuck with the consequences of badly routed railways. He was really the first person to introduce federal subsidies, and the consequences 150 years later are clear: extensive corruption, government waste, lobbyists and special interests. All these parasites are care of Lincoln.

The United States would have been the only major country at that time to fight a civil war to end slavery. If it was over slavery, it was completely unnecessary. Most countries just bought the slaves and freed them, and it's painfully obvious that that would have been considerably cheaper than 10% of the male population. Not only that, but slavery would have vanished anyway, even if you did nothing at all. Why? Because slavery is actually economically inferior to paid labour. Around the industrial revolution an important transition was happening where labour was coupled with capital and trained. This was slavery's deathnell because slavery was unskilled labour, and could never be otherwise. Thus, slavery could have disappeared by itself as it was overtaken by the industrial revolution, or slavery could have been ended sooner by the same route that all the other countries chose, but no, according to Statist history Lincoln decided that destroying the constitution and killing off 10% of the male population was the way to go.

I find it entirely bizarre that most countries deify their worst leaders.  I will leave you with some 'dishonest Abe' Lincoln quotes:

"Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain this Universe, shall there continue knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagougism [sic] as this." - (Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, [New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 1953], v. 3, p. 399. Fragments: Notes for Speeches, Sept. 6, 1859 

 post note:  I made a correction in the language pointed out by a commentator.

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2007 Edward Townes, all rights reserved.
Published: Sunday, December 30, 2007
Last modified: Monday, December 31, 2007

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