Lincoln Unmasked What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe

1 Challenging the Gatekeepers When President Reagan nominated Professor Mel Bradford of the University of Dallas to head the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1981, a group of intellectuals with influence in the administration waged a fierce campaign against the nomination. Their chief complaint was: "He's anti-Lincoln!" Professor Bradford, an expert in the use of rhetoric, had dared to criticize some of Lincoln's deceptive political language in peer-reviewed academic journal articles.1 Professor Bradford's opponents apparently considered this blasphemous and conducted a vicious political campaign against him. They stooped so low as to spread false rumors that he was a Hitler admirer.2 Professor Bradford (who passed away in 1993) eventually withdrew his name in disgust. His opponents prevailed; there would be no challenge to the popular view of Abraham Lincoln. Things have not changed much in the academic world since the Bradford affair. I have been subjected to similar calumny and name-calling, as has anyone else who attempts to deviate from the Official Truth. Lincoln has been portrayed as a saint, and his defenders are so sanctimonious that they consider themselves to be self-appointed Gatekeepers of the Truth. They do whatever is necessary to keep unflattering information about Lincoln from the public. If they do dare to mention such facts, they spin their statements to mislead, misinform, and confuse the reader. One has to wonder: What purpose does all this deception and misinformation serve? If Lincoln was such a saint, why can't his record speak for itself? The gatekeepers constitute what I call the Lincoln cult. It is mostly composed of academics who have spent their careers carrying on the deification of Abraham Lincoln that began with the New England clergy (and the Republican Party) of the late nineteenth century. As a rule, they ignore unpleasant facts about Lincoln, such as his suspension of habeas corpus, his imprisonment of tens of thousands of Northern political opponents during the War between the States, his shutting down of hundreds of opposition newspapers, his micromanagement of the bombing of Southern cities and the waging of war on civilians, his pledge to support a constitutional amendment prohibiting the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery, and his lifelong white supremacist views. If they do mention such things at all, it is only to make voluminous excuses for them or to denounce others who address them in their writing.3 According to Webster's College Dictionary, a cult is "a group that devotes itself to or venerates a person, ideal, fad, etc." or "a religion or sect considered to be false, unorthodox, or extremist." The Lincoln cult is interested not so much in research and education about Lincoln and the warabout discovering historical truthbut in maintaining a largely false image of the man whom they call "Father Abraham" and compare to Jesus and Moses. The rest of the academic world engages in vigorous debate and discussion of myriad issues every day; that's what academic freedom is supposed to be all about. But when it comes to the subject of Lincoln, no such debate is permitted by the gatekeepers. There have been heated debates over the legacies of all other presidents, be it Jefferson, Jackson, Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, Reagan, or Clinton, but no such debate is acceptable regarding Lincoln. One has to wonder: What are the gatekeepers afraid of? The so-called Lincoln scholars' decidedly nonscholarly behavior is motivated primarily by academic self-interest. The academic gatekeepers are paid very well in their academic jobs, and through government and foundation grants as well. ThDilorenzo, Thomas J. is the author of 'Lincoln Unmasked What You're Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307338426 and ISBN 0307338428.