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Written by Thomas DiLorenzo

• Format: Trade Paperback, 384 pages
 
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press
• On Sale: December 2, 2003
• Price: $16.00
• ISBN: 978-0-7615-2646-9 (0-7615-2646-3)

about this book

Through extensive research and meticulous documentation, author and professor of economics Thomas J. DiLorenzo portrays 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 scope and highly decentralized—as the Founding Fathers intended—to a highly centralized, activist state.
Standing in Lincoln's way, DiLorenzo asserts, was the South, with its independent states, its resistance to the national government, and its reliance on unfettered free trade. In the face of such resistence and to accomplish his goals, DiLorenzo argues, Lincoln subverted the Constitution, trampled states' rights, and launched a devastating, and unnecessary, Civil War, whose wounds haunt America still.

Provocative, compelling, and sure to provoke classroom discussion and debate, THE REAL LINCOLN will be of interest to students studying Lincoln's presidency and the Civil War.

"A peacefully negotiated secession was the best way to handle all the problems facing Americans in 1860. A war of coercion was Lincoln's creation. It sometimes takes a century or more to bring an important historical event into perspective. This study does just that and leaves the reader asking, 'Why didn't we know this before?'"
—Donald Livingston, professor of philosophy, Emory University

"Professor DiLorenzo has penetrated to the very heart and core of American history with a laser beam of fact and analysis."
—Clyde Wilson, professor of history, University of South Carolina, and editor, The John C. Calhoun Papers