The Real Lincoln Thomas Delorenzo Summary

Thomas J. DiLorenzo’s book, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War, is about unveiling the side of President Lincoln that is not told in today’s history books and is overlooked by the monumental Lincoln legend. DiLorenzo’s book exposes the myths that made the Civil War seem vague. DiLorenzo is an American economics professor at Loyola University Maryland Sellinger School of Business. He has written many other books regarding mostly history subjects. DiLorenzo is certainly qualified to write this book based off of his previous education and knowledge regarding Abraham Lincoln. The author gives convincing evidence for Lincoln’s overt racism in chapter one. His racism, as expressed in his documented views on racial supremacy, are demonstrated through his desire to colonize all American blacks outside the continental United States. (4) President Lincoln made use of state …show more content…
The many strengths include that DiLorenzo always had some type of proof for his reasoning. “[DiLorenzo] exposes Lincoln 's embarrassing views on race, his ambition for economic nationalism, his rewriting of the history of the founding of the nation, his cavalier violation of constitutional limits on the presidency, and his willingness to wage a barbaric total war to achieve his ends.”(Gamble 2003) The weaknesses of this book are few to none, but include not having an opposition, throughout the book, DiLorenzo only had supporting sources. He never discussed the alternate viewpoints. According to Justin Ewers, “The primary source of information on Lincoln’s life in Illinois is a long-neglected collection of interviews conducted by William Herndon, Lincoln’s law partner of 16 years.” (Ewers 2005) This implies that these sources were mostly biased due to the fact that the primary source was one of Lincoln’s life-long