Description
Well-known Southern writer Walter Donald Kennedy returns to his expose of faulty history in this shocking biography of Abraham Lincoln, the sixteenth president of the United States. Through the use of historic documents, transcripts of speeches, and the words of the “Great Emancipator” himself, Kennedy gives us a very different picture of the man we thought we knew.
“Yes, there was an American president who disregarded the Constitution and suspended the writ of habeas corpus, used military police and courts to arrest political opponents, had a leading political opponent banished from the United States for speaking against his policies in Congress, shut down newspapers that opposed his political agenda, opened and read private mail and telegrams, confiscated the property of ‘disloyal,’ citizens, denied ‘disloyal citizens from obtaining and using an attorney to defend themselves from charges of being ‘disloyal,’ threatened any incarcerated ‘disloyal’ citizen with addition charges for attempting to obtain an attorney for his defense, and used the military to seize and try all citizens charged with being ‘disloyal'” (from the preface). That President was Abraham Lincoln.
Certainly it is hard to believe that a modern American society built on freedom could be ignorant of these egregious crimes. Southern historian Walter Donald Kennedy has spent years revealing the hidden truths behind the facades of accepted history. In this excursion into the muck of popular beliefs, he exposes five major myths about Lincoln and calls upon five well-known historical witnesses to reveal the less-than-admirable actions of the sixteenth president that disprove those populist myths. Finally, Kennedy Presents the writings of American thinkers who demonstrate the “deleterious consequences the acceptance of the Lincoln myth has had on this land of the free.” Surprising tidbits include Lincoln’s atheistic tendencies and his friendship with Marxist leaders. Get ready to relearn the history of the president who shaped the United States of America into the nation it is today–for better or, as Kennedy suggests, for worse
This book consists of three parts:
1) Exposing the Myths (chapters 1-5)
2) Witnesses against Mr. Lincoln (chapters 6-10)
3) Defenders of the real America (chapters 11-13)
*Includes footnotes and bibliography*