Dirty Old Abraham

[planosteve]

Americans have been progressively dumbed down about Lincoln thanks to the avalanche of myths, superstitions, and propaganda produced by generations of “Lincoln scholars.” It wasn’t always that way, however. During his lifetime Lincoln was actually the most hated and detested of all American presidents, as documented by historian Larry Tagg in The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: The Story of America’s Most Reviled President. For example, on page 435 of his book Larry Tagg cites an 1864 Harpers Weekly article that compiled a list of terms that the Northern press used to describe Lincoln including “Filthy Story-Teller, Ignoramus Abe, Despot, Old Scoundrel . . . Perjurer, Liar, Robber, Thief, Swindler, Braggart, Tyrant, Buffoon, Fiend, Usurper, Butcher, Monster . . .”

This all changed after the assassination as the Republican Party reveled in what Larry Tagg calls a “propaganda windfall.” They would rewrite history with the help of the New England clergy in order to impose on Americans their version of what is essentially a New England theocracy composed of a government of nannies, pests, busybodies, tyrants, and money-grubbing plutocrats (known as “Yankees” by some).

New England pastors who had excoriated Lincoln for four years all of a sudden “rewrote their Easter sermons to include a new, exalted view of Lincoln as an American Moses, a leader out of slavery, a national savior who was not allowed to cross over into the Promised Land” himself. Senator James Grimes of Iowa boasted that the Republican Party’s deification of Lincoln “has made it impossible to speak the truth about Abraham Lincoln hereafter.”

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2023/11/lew ... dilorenzo/