Heil Lincoln

"This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill; the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill; you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."
--Morpheus (The Matrix)

dictator - a person exercising absolute power, especially a ruler who has absolute, unrestricted control in a government without hereditary succession

I doubt that there is a history book in the school system that labels Abraham Lincoln as a dictator. Yet, it is difficult to look at the evidence and not conclude that Lincoln's actions place him among the world's most infamous dictators.

Historians, law professors, and other intellectuals have sometimes concluded that Lincoln's actions were indeed consistent with dictatorship but, astonishingly, applaud Lincoln's dictatorial behavior as justified (e.g., Fletcher, 2001; Rhodes, 1900; Rossiter, 1948).

A government that operates within the confines of the Constitution cannot foster dictatorship. Lincoln, of course, strayed far from Consitutional boundaries. Courtesty of DiLorenzo (2002), let's list a few of Lincoln's Constitutional excursions:

• launching an invasion of the South without consulting Congress
• declaring martial law
• blockading Southern ports
• suspending the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of his administration
• imprisoning without trial thousands of Northern citizens
• arresting and imprisoning newspaper publishers who were critical of Lincoln's actions
• censoring telegraph communication
• nationalizing the railroads
• ordering Federal troops to interfere with elections in Northern states by intimidating Democratic voters
• deporting a member of Congress who critized Lincoln's income tax proposal as unconstitutional
• confiscating private property without due process
• confiscating firearms

Central to most of these actions was Lincoln's refusal to permit people to throw off a government that those people believed was despotic. By not recognizing that right of secession, Lincoln presided over the death of at least half a million citizens of the United States. He altered the balance of power between the federal government and the states, with the central government assuming an authoritarian role.

Yet, there are those that praise Lincoln as a 'benevolent dictator' (e.g., Randall, 1926).

The mainstream treatment of Lincoln's character over the years certainly has a Matrix-like feel. Seems more people need to take the red pill...

References

DiLorenzo, T.J. 2002. The real Lincoln. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Fletcher, G.P. 2001. Our secret constitution: How Lincoln remade America. New York: Oxford University Press.

Randall, J.G. 1926. Constitutional problems under Lincoln. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Rhodes, J.F. 1900. History of the United States from the compromise of 1850 to the final restoration of home rule at the South in 1877. New York: Macmillan.

Rossiter, C. 1948. Constitutional dictatorship. New York: Harcourt Brace.