A Review and Study of Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe by Thomas J. DiLorenzo  Three Rivers Press, 2006.

One will never truly understand why and how America’s Civil War happened unless one understands Abraham Lincoln. Like other Americans, I was raised with the Lincoln myth. He was all that represented America. As a Boy Scout, I once visited the Lincoln Monument (my mind was on the Girl Scout I was flirting with), but my naïve mind saw that site only as a monument to a past President. Many years later, having read a great deal, having looked at his face on five-dollar bills and pennies, having looked at evidence that cannot be denied, I’ve come to a different view of the President that America adores, having discovered from reading and research that there is much left out of the history books. As DiLorenzo says, “The point is, not only have whole sections of Lincoln’s record been expunged from history, but other sections have been fabricated.” The Lincoln most believe in did not exist.

Having read The Real Lincoln by DiLorenzo, I predicted that Lincoln Unmasked would be a good read, and I was not disappointed. However, it was stronger and more loaded and important than my pro-Southern mind and heart realized. What I discovered in this well documented work is that American politicians and Lincoln saint-makers have rewritten history with the effectiveness and passion of the communist historians.  There is much that I didn’t know and much that America doesn’t know about Lincoln.  I intend to create a study guide of this book for sale. This is a book that will make you think, as you can see from the chapter titles:

1. Challenging the Gatekeepers
Part I: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Lincoln and His War
2. The Lincoln Myths—Exposed
3. Fake Lincoln Quotes [Things Lincoln Never said]
4. The Myth of the Morally Superior “Yankee” [Rewritten history to portray the North as benevolent and to demonize the South]
5. Lincoln’s Liberian Connection [Lincoln wanted people of color removed from America]
6. An Abolitionist Who Despised Lincoln [People who hated slavery, hated Lincoln!]
7. The Truth About States’ Rights
8. Constitutional Futility
9. Lincoln’s Big Lie
10. A “Great Crime”: The Arrest Warrant for the Chief Justice of the United States
PART II: Economic Issues You’re Supposed to Ignore
11. The Origins of the Republican Party
12. The Great Railroad Lobbyism
13. The Great Protectionist
14. The Great Inflationist
PART III: The Politics of the Lincoln Cult
15. Making Cannon Fodder
16. Lincolnite Totalitarians
17. Pledging Allegiance to the Omnipotent Lincolnian State
18. The Lincoln Cult on Imprisoning War Opponents
APPENDIX: What they Don’t Want You to Read (I’m going to have a separate entry on this)

I’m not the only reader who has found this book fascinating. Thomas E. Woods Jr., bestselling author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, comments: “Brilliant and withering. Lincoln Unmasked answers the kind of forbidden questions that our country now more than ever needs to hear.”