* * * * *

                      … and thus our Greatest President

> Among the reasons [historian William Dunning, James Randall and James
> Rhodes] all labeled [Abraham] Lincoln a “dictator” are his initiating and
> conducting a war by decree for months without the concent of Congress;
> suspending habeas corpus; conscripting the railroads and censoring
> telegraph lines; imprisoning without trial as many as thirty thousand
> Northern citizens for voicing opposition to war; deporting a member of
> Congress—Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, a fierce opponent of the Morrill
> Tariff and the central bank—for merely opposing Lincoln's income tax at a
> Democratic Party rally in Ohio; and shutting down hundreds of Northern
> newspapers and imprisoning some of their editors for simply disagreeing in
> print with his war policies.
>

“Abraham Lincoln and the Triumph of Mercantilism” by Thomas J. DiLorenzo

I've heard of Lincoln suspending habeas corpus (although not from sitting in
US (United States) History at school) but I hadn't realized it was quite that
bad in the 1860s. I've also heard that the Civil War (1861-65) was less about
slavery than it was an economic attack against the United States economic
system by the British (Why The British Had to Kill Abraham Lincoln: Part I)
[1] (Part II [2], Part III [3]) and this essay does cover that aspect in that
the Confederate States (and Britain) were in favor of free trade whereas
Lincoln and the newly formed Rebublican Party (the Party Formerly Known as
the Whigs) wanted a mercantilistic system:

> Mercantilism, which reached its height in the Europe of the seventeenth and
> eighteenth centuries, was a system of statism which employed economic
> fallacy to build up a structure of imperial state power, as well as special
> subsidy and monopolistic privilege to individuals or groups favored by the
> state.
>

“The Logic of Action Two” by Murray N. Rothbard

Which doesn't sound too far off from the modern Republican Party.

It's scary to think that Lincoln, whose power exceeded that of Bush & Co., is
considered, if not the greatest President, then easily one of the Top Three
Presidents, does that mean that in a hundred years, Dubya will be afforded
the same level of reverance?

[1] http://www.etext.org/Politics/LaRouche/lincoln.1
[2] http://www.etext.org/Politics/LaRouche/lincoln.2
[3] http://www.etext.org/Politics/LaRouche/lincoln.3

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