Lincoln at 200

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There are many reasons for libertarians to be opposed to the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. From his expansion of the federal government and the executive power of the president to the crackdown on civil liberties, many of us have been scratching our heads at the love-affair America has with this man. But we’re told that he freed the slaves! In an interview, Lincoln said:

If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

But as Jeffrey Rogers Hummel points out in his brutally honest essay “Fortunate for the slaves that Lincoln ultimately concluded that freeing them offered the most military and political advantages.”

Ok, so Lincoln was more concerned about “saving the union” than “freeing the slaves”. Libertarians agree that no one should be enslaved whether it’s on the plantation, battlefield or anywhere else. As a libertarian who believes in unlimited secession down to the individual, my biggest problem with Lincoln is that he was willing to draft (enslave) young men and sent them to battlefields where  360,222 died. All in order to preserve a union that many felt was no longer worth preserving. Should force have been used to free slaves? Absolutely. Force was initiated by slavemasters and the governments who passed laws or looked the other way in support of this monstrous practice.

Jim Bovard likens Lincoln and his generals to war criminals and cites one of my heroes who not only advocated the abolition of slavery but also the right of secession:

Lysander Spooner, a Massachusetts abolitionist, ridiculed President Lincoln’s claim that the Civil War was fought to preserve a “government by consent.” Spooner observed, “The only idea . . . ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this—that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.”

Henry Louis Gates Jr. and John Stauffer write in the New York Times that:

Lincoln had much more ambivalent feelings about blacks themselves, especially about whether they were, or could ever be, truly equal with whites.

For example, on Aug. 14, 1862, he invited five black men to the White House to convince them to become the founders of a new nation in Panama consisting of those slaves he was about to free. A month before emancipation became law, he proposed a constitutional amendment guaranteeing financing for blacks who wished to emigrate to Liberia or Haiti.

Degrading words, deplored by most white abolitionists, like “Sambo” and “Cuffee,” found their way into Lincoln’s descriptions of blacks; he even used “nigger” several times in speeches. He also liked to tell “darkie” jokes and had a penchant for black-faced minstrel shows. The Lincoln of pre-White House days was a long way from the Great Emancipator; “recovering racist” would be closer to the truth.

and here is Henry Louis Gates on the Daily Show:

Conservatives, not surprisingly, join the White House to praise Lincoln today, even comparing him to Reagan. Johnathan Blanks makes a thoughtful libertarian defense of Lincoln.