Politics

‘The Real Lincoln’ Explores Man Behind The Myth

Posted on June 11, 2015 by CharlieClaywell

Writing a book critiquing United States president Abraham Lincoln is a somewhat precarious venture. Lincoln, referred to as Honest Abe or the Great Emancipator, is so highly revered that he has taken on mythological qualities. I remember first finding holes in the official Lincoln story while researching my family tree and reading newspaper articles from Lincoln’s era. Who he was — and who is he now — is vastly different. Author Thomas J. DiLorenzo thoroughly explores documentation from Lincoln’s political era and punches holes in some of the commonly held beliefs about the 16th president.

The book starts off by addressing Lincoln’s racial beliefs. DiLorenzo provides quotes from various times in Lincoln’s life that show Lincoln did not believe in racial equality. Lincoln himself admitted that the Emancipation Proclamation was simply a military maneuver. His goal — and hope — was that the proclamation would spark a slave uprising in the South. According to Lincoln’s own Secretary of State, William Seward,

We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free.

Lincoln’s goal throughout his presidency was to deport every black person, free or enslaved. Based on his own words, Lincoln was never opposed to slavery, he was opposed to the extension of slavery into the western states.

One of his biggest affronts to freedom, though, was crushing the first amendment right of free speech immediately after he was inaugurated. Lincoln sent federal troops to shut down numerous newspapers that voiced opposition to the war. He arrested — and held without charged — individuals who opposed the war or supported peaceful succession. One of the men arrested in this manner was Francis Key Howard, grandson of Francis Scott Key — who, of course, wrote The Star Spangled Banner. Howard wrote a book about his experience: Fourteen Months In American Bastiles.

Deporting a U.S. Congressman

Another interesting story the author brings to light concerns a duly elected Congressman from Ohio — Clement L. Vallandigham. As the author reports,

At 2:30 a.m. on the morning of May 4, 1863, armed Federal soldiers under the command of General Ambrose Burnside knocked down the doors of the Dayton, Ohio home Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham and arrested him without a civil warrant; then they threw him into a military prison in Cincinnati, Ohio. Congressman Vallandigham was subsequently deported by Lincoln to the Southern states, and he moved to Canada.

Vallandigham “crime” was making a speech in response to Lincoln’s State of the Union Address in which he criticized the president for his unconstitutional usurpation of power. For this he was declared a “traitor” by Lincoln and imprisoned without trial.

Right of Succession

Another compelling part of the book is a section on why the war was fought. Of course, mainstream history repeats the ‘save the Union’ aspect of the War, but what has been lost to history is the Founding Father’s support of a state’s right to leave the Union. The author writes,

In fact, when the Constitution was ratified, Virginia, New York and Rhode Island explicitly reserved the right to secede at some future point. Even when the Civil War began, northern support for a peaceful succession of the Southern states was prevalent.

Revising History?

One fair warning, if you believe any attack on Lincoln’s character is revisionist history, you will not enjoy the book. In the 10 chapters the author addresses such issues as civilians being attacked and killed by northern armies as a sanctioned method of war, suppression of free elections in the north and Lincoln’s career as a lobbyist for the railroad companies (I always thought it was odd the country built railroads during the War). Lincoln’s ties with the railroad led to him to approving ‘internal improvement subsidies’ something every president before him (that dealt with it) vetoed as unconstitutional.

The book paints Lincoln as a dictator attempting to centralize power (in the Federal government). Whether or not that was Lincoln’s ultimate goal it was one of the outcomes of the Civil War. States’ rights and state sovereignty were never restored to their pre-war level.

How It Rates

Rated: 5 out of 5. If you are interested in Civil War history and want a clearer understanding of Lincoln’s political life — including how Henry Clay and the Whigs’ American System heavily influenced Lincoln’s political motives — this is an excellent, relatively short read. This book is also a treasure trove of additional scholarly and non-scholarly book titles about Lincoln and the Civil War.

Learn More

One story lost to history is how a group of Confederate soldiers and their families left the country and started a colony in Brazil after the Civil War ended. Descendants of those families still exist in Brazil to this day. Read about it here.

President James Garfield: Angry Diplomat Cuts Presidency Short

Posted on February 9, 2015 by CharlieClaywell

Unlike the image portrayed by Ohio’s first president — William Harrison — James Garfield actually was poor in his youth. He was the youngest of five children and his parents were devout followers of the then relatively new denomination — the Disciples of Christ.

During college he supported himself as a part-time teacher, a carpenter and even as a janitor. After earning a reputation during the Civil War as a war hero, Garfield became a member of Congress. As a member of Congress he supported the Compromise of 1877, which ended the military occupation of the South.

Garfield was born in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1831 and fatherless by the age of two. Garfield would later drive canal boat teams to earn enough money for an education. He graduated from Williams College in Massachusetts in 1856, and returned to Ohio to teach, employed as a classics professor at the Western Reserve Electric Institute (later Hiram College).

Within a year he would be the Institute’s president.

When he ran for president — after 17 years in Congress — Garfield was not the Republican Party’s first — or even its second choice for president so just like Rutherford B. Hayes before him his election was a tight race. But, Garfield did win both the electoral and the popular vote — Garfield received 10,000 more votes than his opponent.

His presidency only lasted 200 days.

On July 2, 1881 Garfield was shot by a man who was angry that Garfield had not appointed him to a diplomatic post. Garfield died 11 weeks later on September 19.

Victim of the Curse?

Is Garfield a victim of Tecumseh’s Curse? According to legend after questionable tactics were used by U.S. President William Harrison in the defeat and surrender of the Shawnee Indian tribe, a curse was placed upon the White House so that every 20 years, the president would die in office. The theory became more popular in the 1930s after a Ripley’s Believe It or Not book promoted the idea of Tecumseh’s Curse which stated that death would prevent any president elected in an year ending in zero — to fulfill his term in office.

Beginning with Harrison, a U.S. president died in office every 20 years until Ronald Reagan survived an assassination attempt. Four of the presidents on the list are from Ohio.

1840: William Harrison
1860: Abraham Lincoln
1880: James Garfield
1900: William McKinley
1920: Warren Harding
1940: Franklin D. Roosevelt
1960: John F. Kennedy

Ohio’s Presidential Legacy

Ohio’s Presidential Legacy: Ulysses S. Grant — Good Guy — Bad Crowd

Posted on December 22, 2014 by CharlieClaywell

(This is the second in the series about Ohio’s presidential legacy. You can read the first entry, about William Harrison, here)

Ulysses S. Grant has had some bad luck when it comes to how he is remember. If he could have bypassed the Presidency and just been the man who won the Civil War, history would have been so much kinder to him. Instead, though, Grant has landed right in the middle of the most controversial presidents list.

The interesting thing is — Grant knew he wasn’t presidential material. In his farewell address to Congress, he even went so far as to apologize for his errors of judgement, noting he had the “misfortune to be called to the Office of Chief Executive without any political training.”

Although his tenure in office is oftened labeled one of the most corrupt in U.S. history, Grant was never personally involved with any of the scandals and his honesty and integrity was never questioned. His story is really of a man who never wanted to be president — one who admittedly did not have the political savvy to be in the country’s highest office.

Besides the Wall Street scandal which led to the Financial Crisis of 1869, others that occurred while he was in office included:

The Whiskey Ring: Before being exposed in 1875, a group of mostly Republican politicians siphoned off millions of dollars in federal taxes on liquor.
Credit Mobilier: Credit Mobilier was a fraudulent, private construction company that stole from the U.S. government by padding federal contracts and also skimmed profits from the Union Pacific Railroad. The scandal involved several Republican politicians including the vice president.

According to the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, though, Grant did do a few things right.

…in the areas of Native American policy, civil service reform, and African American rights, he took steps that few had attempted. He also executed a successful foreign policy and was responsible for improving Anglo-American relations.

Trivia:

The initial S in Grant’s name means nothing — his full name is actually: Hiram Ulysses Grant.

Books about Ulysses S. Grant
Quite a few book have been written about the 18th president of the United States and a great resource for book reviews about Grant — or other U.S. presidents — is the blog, My Journey Through the Best Presidential Biographies. The blog author has reviewed several books about Grant which you can read here.>> You can read the Personal Memoirs of Grant free, here.

Categories: American History, Politics