How Is The Story Told By Chapter Summary By Thomas J. Delorenzo

Thomas J. DiLorenzo, wrote this book to scavenge the documentary record in an attempt to show Lincoln as a revolutionary centralizer who used national sovereignty to establish corporate-mercantilist control at the expense of open economic liberty. Through lots of research and careful documentation, DiLorenzo describes the sixteenth president as a man who devoted his political career to revolutionizing the American form of government from one that was very limited in choice and highly dispersed as the Founding Fathers intended, to a highly centralized, activist state. Americans consider Lincoln to be the greatest president in history. His legend as the greatest president has created hundreds of books, a national holiday, and a monument in Washington,

He has the experience of writing books and his other books are very well known. The overall summary in chapter two is the opposition that Lincoln, his colleagues, and practically all northerners had towards racial equality. DeLorenzo shows this with the very first quote in this chapter. He says, “The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these territories. We want them for the homes of free white people” (10). A quote concerning this topic is on nearly every page. That is how DiLorenzo shows Lincolns ambitious ways. Lincoln claimed that slavery was a “monstrous injustice” (13). Lincoln opposed slavery, but if it really came down to it, freedom would be all the emancipated would have.” No abolitionists was ever elected to any major political office in any northern state. The overwhelming majority of white northerners cared little about the welfare of the slaves and treated the blacks who lived among them with contempt, ridicule, discrimination, and sometimes violence”

Anyone who would wage war on citizens were barbaric, according to The Law of Nations author Emmerich de Vattel (175). Lincoln even passed a law that seemed to protect civilians. The Lieber Code “contained a piece of Lincoln rhetoric at the very end that permitted military commanders to completely ignore the code if the situation at hand deemed it necessary in the commander’s opinion” (176). So that meant soldiers could do as they pleased even at civilians’ expense so long as the commander approved. This is another example of Lincoln pretending to take action. DiLrenzo concludes that waging war on civilians had to have been a deliberate effort on Lincoln’s part because so many of his generals, such as Sherman, were doing it (180-181). These actions were aimed directly at the civilians. As proof, DiLrenzo offers Colonel Beatty’s orders “every time the telegraph wire was cut we would burn a house, every time a train was fired was fired upon we would hang a man, and we would continue to do so until every house was burned and every man hanged between Dacatur and Bridgeport”