Saved the Union? Not so fast.
On Dec. 23, 2007, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press, Paul told then-host Tim Russert that the Civil War was "senseless" and that "Abe Lincoln should never have gone to war." Paul accused Lincoln of provoking the war to "get rid of the original intent of the Republic."
Presidential candidates usually have somewhere in their retinues men and women who are best described as the campaign's "brain trust" - those with academic backgrounds who supply the intellectual fuel for the candidate.
Among Paul's prominent libertarian supporters is Loyola economics professor Thomas DiLorenzo. At the conclusion of Paul's book Revolution: A Manifesto, he recommends DiLorenzo's book The Real Lincoln, a scorching Lincoln history that aims to revise the common historical assessment of the Great Emancipator.
In his book, DiLorenzo casts Lincoln much as he does in his vivid, regularly turned out anti-Lincoln screeds for the website of Lew Rockwell, Paul's former chief of staff. DiLorenzo refers to the 16th president as "The First Dictator-President," "Abe the Mass Murderer," and "Dishonest Abe." Rockwell, it should be noted, was recently accused on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, by the president of the libertarian Cato Institute, as being the "likely source" of the controversial Paul newsletters seen by many as racist and anti-Semitic.
Paul shares with DiLorenzo the belief that the Civil War was not fought over issues of Union and ending slavery but, as DiLorenzo writes, "to destroy the most significant check on the powers of the central government: the right of secession." In other words, DiLorenzo dismisses the historical fact of Lincoln believing the government should do only what individuals cannot do for themselves - insisting instead that the 16th president was really about creating a massive, tyrannical federal government.
