The Lincoln Myth

THE CATHOLIC KNIGHT: I started reading books about Abraham Lincoln back in 2003, and it wasn't long before I realised that something didn't seem right. So I dug deeper, and in time I came to the conclusion that Lincoln not only ran the Union side of the Civil War very poorly, but that he was actually the CAUSE of the Civil War, and that our over sized federal government today, for all its big spending and heavy taxation, is the direct product of Lincoln's actions and the things that happened following his death. I came to the conclusion that Abraham Lincoln represented the direct antithesis of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, and that Lincoln's War was everything the Founding Fathers of America opposed in 1776. In other words, I discovered that Lincoln was every bit the tyrant as old King George III, if not worse! I came to despise Lincoln and everything he represented. It amazes me that Americans continue to put his image on our money, and that his enormous statue occupies one of the largest monuments in Washington DC. He was a monster of a president. It is nice to hear my opinions validated by two very astute historians. One of them, Dr. Thomas E. Woods, is a devout Catholic.

I cannot stress this enough.  Are children are being lied to.  You were lied to!  They lied to me too.  Of course, I don't blame my elementary school teachers, they were lied to as well.  Who is responsible for this?  I'm sure the Department of Education plays some role, but I've seen Hollywood and party establishment people on both sides (Democrat/Republican) push the Lincoln myth.

The truth is our whole modern republic is built on what Lincoln established in 1861 - 1865.  We live in a political system where we are told that it is 'okay' for the government to suspend the rights of certain people for various reasons.  We are told that it is 'okay' for the federal government to make war on its own people if those people should ever dare talk about repeating the actions called for in America's Declaration of Independence (1776).  We are told that it is 'okay' for the government to suspend the civil rights of all Americans when it suspects that drugs, guns, terrorism or abnormal religious practices might be involved.  We are told it is 'okay' for our government to send our military to the ends of the earth, picking fights with whomever we choose, to 'make the world safe for democracy.'  This is Lincoln's America -- and what a glorious empire it is!  Ancient Rome pales in comparison.

I must also point out here that the Lincoln myth is deeply connected to anti-Catholicism and Know-Nothingism here in the United States. Shortly after Lincoln's assassination in 1865, the remnants of the old Know-Nothing Party immediately went to work blaming the pope (and Catholics in general) for the assassination. Their conspiracy theories amounted to little, as there were about a dozen conspiracy theories circulating at the time, implicating everyone from Vice President Andrew Johnson, to Confederate President Jefferson Davis, to Union bankers. The anti-Catholic theories were not given much credence until 1884 when a disaffected Canadian Catholic priest named Charles Chiniquy became a Presbyterian minister and started circulating all sorts of bizarre stories about the Catholic Church, including an alleged plot by the Jesuits to assassinate Lincoln. Chiniquy offered no tangible proof for his grand conspiracy, as disaffected anti-Catholics rarely do, but his writings lit a firestorm in America's Protestant churches, particularly in the Northern states.

This mythology continues today among extreme Fundamentalist groups and hard-core Leftist groups, both virulently anti-Catholic and eager to connect the papacy to the Lincoln assassination. This is where Americanism enters, for those who initially pushed the Lincoln assassination myth, along with the Lincoln legacy myth, were hard-core Americanists, who believed the United States stood above religion and that religion itself was subject to American government and ideals. The heirs of this anti-Catholic Americanism are still with us today, and continue to push the Lincoln legacy and assassination myths on the Internet.