My friend Tibor Machan has courageously entered the fray over the issue of Lincoln and secession with a typically eloquent essay, “Lincoln, Secession and Slavery,” on the Cato Institute’s website (June 1). I say “courageous” because his essay is not entirely a hymn of praise to Father Abraham, the standard prerequisite for “Lincoln scholarship” in America. Anyone who offers even the slightest criticism of Lincoln risks being smeared, lied about, and accused of the vilest intentions by the cult of “Lincoln scholars.”
Machan does (rather timidly) admit to Lincoln’s “blemished record of following the ideal of free government in his political life” by suspending the writ of habeas corpus and ordering mass arrests of tens of thousands of Northern civilian opponents of his regime, including dozens, if not hundreds, of newspaper editors and owners. And he correctly points out that when it suited his political purposes, Lincoln clearly advocated secession, as he did in an 1848 speech about the Mexican War and with his unconstitutional orchestration of the secession of western Virginia during the war.
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