Social Studies TEKS Review

“The Unrevised Story of Lincoln”

Comments by Dr. Carole Hornsby Haynes

March 26, 2026  

CHH - In the Civil War sections in several grades, references are made to Lincoln. The overall theme is that Lincoln is praised as the “Great Emancipator” who freed the nation from the curse of slavery. This view is completely false. Lincoln didn’t care much about freeing the slaves, so long as the South remained in the Union. He was an extreme nationalist. Under his administration, the U.S. went from a states rights, limited government Constitutional Republic to a centralized government that ignored the Constitution and denied the Constitutional rights of the states. Historial references are available for each of the charges below. 

The Idea of Big Government Came from Lincoln

1. He called up state militias on his own authority, despite the fact that no one had fired a shot or indeed intended to. To cloak these actions, he warned of an impending invasion that the South had no intention of launching and summarily began the War, despite the fact that Congress had no immediate intention of exercising its exclusive authority in this area.

2. He authorized recruitment of troops and the expenditure of millions of dollars – all powers sspecifically delegated to Congress.

3. He shut down over 300 newspapers and journals by executive order.

4. He created a state (West Virginia) – a slave state.

5. He imported foreign mercenaries to fight against people he still insisted were Americans.

6. He confiscated private property without due process.

7. He printed paper money.

8. He dispersed assembled legislatures.

9. He suspended the right of habeas corpus, a power not delegated to the executive branch, and ordered the arrest of U.S. Congressman Henry May representing Maryland. He also had arrested most of the Maryland State Legislature, most of the Baltimore city council, the police commissioner of Baltimore, the mayor of Baltimore, and thousands of prominent Maryland citizens. These people were arrested and held in military prisons, without trial, some of them for years. This trashing of the Constitution upset many Marylanders. One of them was named Booth. 

Rethinkin’ Lincoln

Lincoln signed into law much unconstitutional legislation, including a new central banking system --long opposed by Southerners and many Northerners as being a clear violation of Article I, Section 8 --and the first income tax in American history.  

Lincoln did not have a declaration of war.  He knew that such a move would have recognized the legitimacy of secession both by law and in fact, so he adopted the position that the Southern States were in “rebellion.”  The Constitution is clear on federal power in relation to “insurrection” or “domestic violence,” in other words “rebellion.”  Article IV, Section 4 allows for the federal government to protect the States against “domestic violence” only through the application of the State legislature or through the State executive.  Lincoln had neither.  Article I, Section 8 allows the Congress to call forth the militia to “suppress Insurrections,” but that power is qualified by Article IV, Section 4, and Congress did not call forth the militia; Lincoln did.  

Lincoln is given credit for putting slavery on the path to extinction but it was unconstitutional, according to Massachusetts abolitionist and former Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Robbins Curtis.He wrote,

“If the President, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy in time of war, may, by an executive decree, exercise this power to abolish slavery in the States, which power was reserved to the States, because he is of opinion that he may thus “best subdue the enemy,” what other power, reserved to the States or to the people, may not be exercised by the President, for the same reason that he is of opinion he may thus best subdue the enemy? And, if so, what distinction can be made between powers not delegated to the United States at all, and powers which, though thus delegated, are conferred by the Constitution upon some department of the Government other than the Executive?” 

Influenced by Karl Marx

Lincoln was not an actual communist, or even a true socialist, but many of his remarks on labor and social issues did reflect the views expressed by Karl Marx. 

Like Marx, Lincoln was also a strong proponent of the type of centralized governmental authority. During the war, many who opposed Lincoln’s policies were imprisoned without trial and his Legal Tender Act of 1862 put half a billion dollars of unsecured federal currency into circulation. That Act was the forerunner of the present Federal Reserve Notes and the government’s unlimited printing of money backed by nothing more than faith and credit. 

Was Lincoln the Great Emancipator?

The renowned Austrian economist Murray Rothbard in his article, “Just War,” analyzed Lincoln with depth and knowledge of historical detail.

“Lincoln’s emphasis was on Whig economic statism: high tariffs, huge subsidies to railroads, public works. As one of the nation’s leading lawyers for Illinois Central and other big railroads, indeed, Lincoln was virtually the candidate from Illinois Central and the other large railroads.” 

The presidential nomination was won through a corrupt bargain: 

“One reason for Lincoln’s victory at the convention was that Iowa railroad entrepreneur Grenville M. Dodge helped swing the Iowa delegation to Lincoln. In return, early in the Civil War, Lincoln appointed Dodge to army general. Dodge’s task was to clear the Indians from the designated path of the country’s first heavily subsidized federally chartered trans-continental railroad, the Union Pacific. In this way, conscripted Union troops and hapless taxpayers were coerced into socializing the costs on constructing and operating the Union Pacific. This sort of action is now called euphemistically ‘the cooperation of government and industry.’” 

Extreme advocate of protective tariffs in order to promote American industry.

“But Lincoln’s major focus was on raising taxes, in particular raising and enforcing the tariff. His convention victory was particularly made possible by support from the Pennsylvania delegation. Pennsylvania had long been the home and the political focus of the nation’s iron and steel industry which, ever since its inception during the War of 1812, had been chronically inefficient and had, therefore, constantly been bawling for high tariffs and, later, import quotas. Virtually the first act of the Lincoln administration was to pass the Morrill protective tariff act, doubling existing tariff rates, and creating the highest tariff rates in American history.” 

Tariffs were much more important to Lincoln than ending slavery.

“In his First Inaugural, Lincoln was conciliatory about maintaining slavery; what he was hard-line about toward the South was insistence on collecting all the customs tariffs in that region. As Lincoln put it, the federal government would ‘collect the duties and imposts, but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against . . . people anywhere.’ The significance of the federal forts is that they provided the soldiers to enforce the customs tariffs; thus, Fort Sumter was at the entrance to Charleston Harbor, the major port, apart from New Orleans, in the entire South. The federal troops at Sumter were needed to enforce the tariffs that were supposed to be levied at Charleston Harbor.” 

Although slavery was far less important to Lincoln that economic nationalism, his “moderate” remarks about slavery were deceptive.

“Lincoln was a master politician which means that he was a consummate conniver, manipulator, and liar. The federal forts were the key to his successful prosecution of the war. Lying to South Carolina, Abraham Lincoln managed to do what Franklin D. Roosevelt and Henry Stimson did at Pearl Harbor 80 years later – maneuvered the Southerners into firing the first shot. In this way, by manipulating the South into firing first against a federal fort, Lincoln made the South appear to be ‘aggressors’ in the eyes of the numerous waverers and moderates in the North.” 

Aside from the fanatic New Englanders, most people in the North did not favor forcing the South to remain in the Union.

“Outside of New England and territories populated by transplanted New Englanders, the idea of forcing the South to stay in the Union was highly unpopular. In many middle-tier states, including Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, there was a considerable sentiment to mimic the South by forming a middle Confederacy to isolate the pesky and fanatical Yankees. Even after the war began, the Mayor of New York City and many other dignitaries of the city proposed that the city secede from the Union and make peace and engage in free trade with the South. Indeed, Jefferson Davis’s lawyer after the war was what we would now call the ‘paleo-libertarian’ leader of the New York City bar, Irish-Catholic Charles O’Conor, who ran for President in 1878 on the Straight Democrat ticket, in protest that his beloved Democratic Party’s nominee for President was the abolitionist, protectionist, socialist, and fool Horace Greeley.” 

Once Lincoln succeeded in provoking war, he went ahead with the whole despotic outlook.

“The Lincoln Administration and the Republican Party took advantage of the overwhelmingly Republican Congress after the secession of the South to push through almost the entire Whig economic program. Lincoln signed no less than ten tariff-raising bills during his administration. Heavy ‘sin’ taxes were levied on alcohol and tobacco, the income tax was levied for the first time in American history, huge land grants and monetary subsidies were handed out to transcontinental railroads (accompanied by a vast amount of attendant corruption), and the government went off the gold standard and virtually nationalized the banking system to establish a machine for printing new money and to provide cheap credit for the business elite. And furthermore, the New Model Army and the war effort rested on a vast and unprecedented amount of federal coercion against Northerners as well as the South; a huge army was conscripted, dissenters and advocates of a negotiated peace with the South were jailed, and the precious Anglo-Saxon right of habeas corpus was abolished for the duration.”