Tom DiLorenzo on how Henry Clay thought ending slavery could harm the cause of liberty

In the eulogy Lincoln claimed that [Henry] Clay, like himself, had a "deep devotion to the cause of human liberty," even though Clay was a slaveowner.  Clay was opposed to slavery "on principle"; however, he not only owned slaves but also was opposed to eliminating slavery.  In Lincoln's words, "[Clay] did not perceive, as I think no wise man has perceived, how [slavery] could be at once eradicated, without producing a greater evil, even to the cause of human liberty itself."

It's hard to imagine a clearer example of circular reasoning: Slavery is an affront to human liberty, but ending slavery would supposedly be even worse.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, pp. 14-15

Henry Clay
1890-1893

Tom DiLorenzo on how Lincoln rationalized the suspension of constitutional liberties

Having suspended habeas corpus, Lincoln ordered the arrest and imprisonment of virtually anyone who disagreed with his views - views that were new, radical, and not yet subject to any debate by the people's representatives in Congress or by the judiciary...  Lincoln rationalized this suspension of constitutional liberties - at least in his own mind - with the rhetorical tool of falsely equating the Constitution with the Union... [even though secession] was certainly the belief of most Americans at the time.  In the end, it was Lincoln's willingness to use brute military force, not his legal reasoning or his rhetorical talents, that allowed him to get away with such a radical assault on constitutional liberties.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, pp. 132-133

Marching in Step to the Music of the Union

Tom DiLorenzo on Henry Clay's time as general counsel of the Bank of the United States

Having incurred $40,000 in personal debt, [Henry] Clay left Congress for two years in 1822 to serve as general counsel of the Bank of the United States.  As Clay biographer Maurice Baxter explains,

His income from this business apparently amounted to what he needed [to pay off his personal debt]: three thousand dollars a year from the bank as chief counsel, more for appearing in specific cases; and a sizable amount of real estate in Ohio and Kentucky in addition to the cash... When he resigned to become Secretary of State in 1825, he was pleased with his compensation.

Who wouldn't be pleased?  In current dollars the amount of money Clay earned in just two years would be nearly a million dollars.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 65

Henry Clay
1894

Tom DiLorenzo; "Clay was a powerful proponent of a nationalized banking system"

[Henry] Clay was also a powerful proponent of a nationalized banking system.  He fought a pitched political battle with Andrew Jackson (which Jackson eventually won) over the rechartering of the Bank of the United States.

As speaker of the House of Representatives, Clay personally demonstrated the usefulness of the Bank of the United States to politicians as ambitious as he was.  He used his position to place his cronies from Kentucky on the bank's board of directors, enabling them to reward their political supporters with cheap credit.  This was precisely the kind of political corruption that opponents of nationalized banking, such as Andrew Jackson, feared.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 64

First Bank of the United States

Tom DiLorenzo on the political agenda of Henry Clay

When Henry Clay entered national politics in 1811 as a member of Congress, on the eve of the War of 1812 one of his first acts was to try to convince his colleagues to invade Canada, which they did, three times.  He waged a thirty-year political battle with the likes of James Madison, James Monroe, John C. Calhoun, John Randolph, Andrew Jackson, and the other defenders of the Jeffersonian philosophy of limited, decentralized, constitutional government.  Clay was the political heir to Alexander Hamilton and so championed centralized government power driven by political patronage for the benefit of what U.S. Senator John Taylor of Virginia called the "monied aristocracy."

~ Tom DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 62

Henry Clay
1873

Tom DiLorenzo on how the American System differed from true capitalism

The American System... was the framework for a giant political patronage system.  Politicians who could control such a system could use it to maintain and enhance their own power and wealth almost indefinitely, as the Republican Party eventually did.  It was not an example of "capitalism," as James McPherson incorrectly stated in Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution, but quite the opposite: It was mercantilism, the very system that Adam Smith railed against in his epic defense of capitalism, The Wealth of Nations.

~ Tom DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, pp. 59-60

Tom DiLorenzo on how the Louisiana Purchase agitated New England secessionists

Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase infuriated the New England Federalists, who wanted America to remain as "ethnically pure" as possible.  Most of them agreed with William Smith Shaw that "the grand cause of all our present difficulties may be traced... to so many hordes of foreigners immigrating to America."  Given such strong feelings about ethnic purity, for New Englanders the Louisiana Purchase, which encouraged the settlement of even more "horders of foreigners" in the United States, was intolerable.  Josiah Quincy was so outraged that he believed the only recourse for the New England states was secession.  The Louisiana Purchase meant that "the bonds of this Union are virtually dissolved; that the States which compose it are free from their moral obligation; and that, as with be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some, to prepare definitely for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must."

~ Tom DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln, p. 96

Map of Louisiana Purchase
1904

Robert Higgs on "The Real Lincoln"

To the legions of Americans who regard Abraham Lincoln as a racial saint and a national demigod, Thomas DiLorenzo's The Real Lincoln will come as a rude awakening. Unlike his mythic representations as Honest Abe and the Great Emancipator, the real Lincoln dedicated his political career to the establishment of a corrupt system of high tariffs and corporate subsidies, and he was willing to plunge the nation into a bloody cataclysm in order to achieve his lifelong political aspirations.

Roberts Higgs, The Independent Review, endorsement appeared in The Real Lincoln