Abraham Lincoln: Friend or Foe of Freedom?

8/14/2019 Abraham Lincoln: Friend or Foe of Freedom?

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Abraham Lincoln:Friend or Foeof Freedom?

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Author

Lincoln Unmaskedand The Real Lincoln

and

Joseph A. Morris

President

Lincoln Legal Foundation

Remarks delivered at

The Heartland Institutes

23rd Anniversary Benefit Dinner

October 25, 2007

Chicago, Illinois


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Abraham Lincoln:

Friend or Foe of Freedom?

Copyright 2008 The Heartland Institute

Published by

The Heartland Institute

19 South LaSalle Street #903Chicago, Illinois 60603phone 312/377-4000

fax 312/377-5000www.heartland.org

All rights reserved, including the right to reproducethis book or portions thereof in any form.

Opinions expressed are solely those of the authors.Nothing in this report should be construed as necessarily

reflecting the view of The Heartland Institute oras an attempt to influence pending legislation.

Additional copies of this bookletare available from The Heartland Institute

for the following prices:

1-10 copies $4.95 per copy



101 or more $1.95 per copy

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN-13 978-1-934791-05-9

ISBN-10 1-934791-05-9

Manufactured in the United States of America


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Table of Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page v

Joseph L. Bast, The Heartland Institute

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 1Dan Miller, Chicago Sun-Times

Opening Statement

Lincoln: Foe of Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 5

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Opening Statement

Lincoln: Friend of Freedom . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 13

Joseph A. Morris

Rebuttal: Thomas J. DiLorenzo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 21

Rebuttal: Joseph A. Morris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 25

Cross Examination

Audience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 29

Speaker Biographies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 37

About the Publisher . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 39

Order Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . page 41


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Preface

Welcome to The Heartland Institutes 23rd Anniversary benefit

dinner. We are absolutely delighted to have you here with us.

There are almost 600 people here tonight, which is outstanding.

Among those 600 people, there are approximately 70 elected

officials. These are the best, most interesting, smartest elected

officials of the 7,300 state elected officials in the United States. If

some of them are sitting at your table, by all means engage them in

conversation, congratulate them, and slip them some money

because they may need it for their next campaign.

There are also approximately 30 think-tank folks in the

audience tonight. Because there are so many, I wont name them

all, but I would like to call attention to two very special guests inthe room with us tonight.

Thanks, Scott and Fred

When The Heartland Institute was started 23 years ago, I was the

first employee ... but it wasnt my idea. Heartland was actually the

idea of a young guy named Scott Hodge. Scott proposed it to Dave

Padden, and Dave thought it was a good idea. Scott then followed

his girlfriend off to Minnesota and left the position open for me to

come in and take it and the rest, as they say, is history.

Scott went on to join The Heritage Foundation, where he did

tremendous work, and then from there to the Tax Foundation,

which he now serves as president. Thanks for everything, Scott!

Scott is doing a fantastic job at the Tax Foundation and if you are

not a member or supporter I would encourage you to become one.


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LINCOLN:FRIEND OR FOE OF FREEDOM?

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The second really outstanding person in this room, among

many outstanding people I guess, is Fred Smith. Fred is president

of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which got started the verysame year Heartland got started, 1984. The Competitive Enterprise

Institute is in Washington, DC. Its doing terrific work on a variety

of issues, but we are most attracted to and most admire is their

work on environmental issues and climate change, where they are

just second to none in the quality of research they are doing.

Fred, youve always been a mentor and a role model for me. I

really appreciate you being here tonight.

Rest in Peace

There are some people friends of freedom, we call them who

are not here tonight, who passed away since we last met here in

October 2007.Most recently, John Berthoud, president of the National

Taxpayers Union, passed away on September 26. John was a

friend and an outstanding, hard-working guy. The National

Taxpayers Union is one of the most important organizations in the

country. John was only 45 years old, and he will be sorely missed.

Another man down is Tim Wheeler. As many of you know,especially you libertarian activists, Tim was one of the original

writers forNational Review. I got to know him over the years as a

freelance writer and ghostwriter for various prominent people. A

remarkable, tireless, and talented writer, and an absolutely

principled free-market advocate. He passed away on August 5.

Prof. Hans Sennholz passed away on June 23 at age of 85. He

was one of the founders of the modern libertarian movement, a

teacher of four generations of students at Grove City College, and

president of FEE, the Foundation for Economic Education, for five


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PREFACE

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years.

Richard Rue passed away on May 16. Rick worked for the

Lincoln Legal Foundation and for The Heartland Institute in the1990s, and then for the United Republican Fund and a number of

other groups. He passed away in California.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Milton Friedman passed away on

November 16, 2006. Dr. Friedman was, of course, the greatest

economist of the twentieth century, a brilliant libertarian thinker,

and in many ways and at many times a friend to me and of The

Heartland Institute. He may have been the shortest giant who ever

lived. God bless you, Milton, and bless Rose, too.

And finally, Lord Ralph Harris passed away on October 19,

2006. He was the first employee of the Institute for Economic

Affairs, the grand-daddy of libertarian think tanks, based in

London. He was an advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

We honor the memory of these distinguished men, and werededicate ourselves to their cause of lifting the heavy hand of

tyranny from the backs of men and women, here and around the

world, who strive to be free.

Growing OrganizationThe first time The Heartland Institute held an anniversary benefit

dinner, we had 18 people show up. Half of them were board

members, about a quarter or a third of them were the spouses of

board members, and there were two guys who were catching a

smoke outside the door that the hotel asked to come in because we

were paying for the meals anyway. It was a very small but

dedicated group.

Each year we get a little bit bigger. And although we havent

set a record this year we had at least 600 people once before


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this is already an outstanding and really successful event ... and

you havent even heard from the speakers yet!

I would like to thank the people who reserved platinum tablesand gold tables, because its their contributions that make it

possible for us to offer free tickets to some of the high school and

college students who are joining us here tonight. I would like to

quickly name those platinum and gold table buyers. They are

Planned Realty Group, United Republican Fund, Michael Keiser

and Philip Friedmann, Herbert Walberg, Assurant Health, Dave

Padden, The New Coalition for Economic and Social Change,

Lincoln Legal Foundation, and Pfizer. Please give a round of

applause for our platinum and gold table sponsors.

A Mixed Year

Heartland has had a great year, and it has grown dramatically. Thenumber of donors is more than 2,000, up from 1,400 just a year

ago. The number of contacts with elected officials is increasing

dramatically. Our press coverage has never been as good as its

been recently. Weve published twice as many books in the past 12

months as in the previous 12 months, and a whole lot more policy

studies and research and commentary pieces.Unfortunately, it hasnt been such a good year for freedom

and the ultimate objective for The Heartland Institute is, of course,

to advance freedom.

In many states we saw massive tax increases and tax increase

proposals. The federal government is still spending every year

hundreds of billions of dollars more than it brings in. Weve seen

new proposals to socialize our health care system an idea that

was bankrupt 20 years ago and 10 years ago. Why presidential

candidates are still talking about nationalizing our health care


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PREFACE

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system is beyond me, but its an indication that our educational job

obviously is not finished. Its incomplete.

And we cant seem to move the ball down the field on schoolchoice. One of the most important things we can do to expand

freedom in America is to give parents the power to choose where

their kids go to school. But the teacher unions are powerful, and

they act as a buffer against any of our efforts to expand these

programs. There has been some progress, some very modest

programs, but again its a disappointment for people who are

advocates of freedom.

Likewise with tax and expenditure limitations. Weve been

trying to get states to adopt constitutional amendments that would

limit their spending and their taxing ability. That effort ran into

some very fierce opposition last year, and were not making much

progress.

And finally, on the environment. Dont get me started on theenvironment! Former vice president Albert Gore gets the Noble

Peace Prize for producing a propaganda film that most scientists

will say exaggerates, lies, and distorts the actual science on climate

change. Its a symbol of whats wrong in America with public

policy today. Were not making a lot of progress. If this is an issue

of concern to you, I hope you will talk to me or to Fred Smith,because Freds shop is doing terrific work on this as well.

Heartlands History

Let me conclude quickly by giving you a little nutshell description

of The Heartland Institute since it is, after all, The Heartland

Institute that brings you here tonight and that your contributions

are supporting.

Heartland was started 23 years ago. I was a student at the


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University of Chicago at the time. Dave Padden brought together a

group of 15 people to pledge $100 a month to fund this new

start-up think tank. The reason they gave only $100 a month andsome of you have heard this before is because they thought I

would blow $1,000 if they gave it to me all at one time. So they

figured, lets make him come and ask for it month after month.

And I did that. It was also tremendous discipline to produce results

when your donors are expecting to get a progress report from you

every four weeks.

In the first year we had a budget of $24,000. This year, for the

first time, weve broken five million dollars in our budget. It is a

big accomplishment. A lot of people in this room are responsible

for it. You all are applauding now for the donors, and not for the

beneficiary of that kind of generosity.

We now have 32 full-time staff, which is an amazing thing for

us to have. We have 115 policy advisors, academics at majoruniversities and not-so-major universities all across the country. A

couple dozen of them are with us here tonight. We have 527

legislative advisors, elected officials who have voluntarily chosen

to join the advisory board to The Heartland Institute. And

Heartland takes some pretty hard, principled libertarian positions

on the issues of the day so to have more than 500 electedofficials sign up to formally endorse our programs is a pretty big

deal.

We have 2,100 donors to our organization. And I will end on

maybe a slightly sour note, because it is often asked who funds

The Heartland Institute.

If you Google The Heartland Institute, the first result that

comes up is The Heartland Institute Web site. The second is

something called Source Watch, an organization that just attacks

conservative groups, and the third one is Exxon Secrets, which


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PREFACE

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identifies all of the groups that ever got any money from

ExxonMobil Corporation. The Heartland Institute appears on each

of those Web sites.Were accused of being a front for big corporations, in

particular Exxon. Its not the case.

No corporation gives more than 5 percent of The Heartland

Institutes annual budget. This year, all the energy companies

combined are going to give less than 5 percent of our total annual

budget. If funding influences our opinions, then when 95 percent

of our income is coming from energy consumers and not energy

producers you would think wed have a pretty strong anti-oil

company bias, but in fact we dont.

The truth is we have a program and people absolutely

committed to principles and the ideas of free enterprise. Our

donors support us because they agree with those ideas, not because

they want to change our message.So thats what The Heartland Institute is, and thats why you

are here tonight helping us raise money to keep this fantastic

program going and expanding all the time. I am deeply grateful to

every one of you who bought a ticket or table tonight ... and I hope

you have a real good time.

Joseph Bast

President, The Heartland Institute

October 25, 2007


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1 Dan Miller is business editor of the Chicago Sun-Times.

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Introduction

By Dan Miller1

Good evening, Im Dan Miller. Im business editor of the Chicago

Sun-Times and have been a member of and donor to The Heartland

Institute for a couple decades. I am honored and delighted that Joe

Bast tapped me to moderate this debate. Its great to be with

friends and old faces.

And speaking of old faces ...

Im sure Fred Smith doesnt remember anything about meeting

me when I was chairman of the Illinois Commerce Commission,

but I want you all to know that Fred is in the cross-hairs of a smear

campaign that hits not only the Competitive Enterprise Institute

and weve been privileged at the Chicago Sun-Times to publish

several articles by CEI people but also The Heartland Institute,

Cato, and so many others.The effort now on the part of the left is to demonize all of the

people who favor limited government, individual liberty, and

personal responsibility. Its a very, very serious effort to

undermine everything that people in this room have worked for.

Fred is especially in the cross-hairs, and Joe is just a micro- inch

away from the cross-hairs. Its something that youve got to be

aware of. Theyre after us theyre after us big-time.


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Remember, being paranoid is not irrational if theyre really

after you ... and theyre really after us.

Lincolns Legacy

Like many of you, I presume, I grew up and grew older regarding

Abraham Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents. He preserved

the Union against the rebels, he freed the slaves, he urged

reconciliation during Reconstruction, he was humble and a leaderof enormous charisma, and persistent.

It was only in recent years, however, that I realized others have

challenged those assumptions. Yes, he preserved the Union but

where in the Constitution does it prohibit states from seceding?

And by what legal right did Lincoln prosecute the Civil War or, as

one of our debaters tonight calls it, the war between the states,

or, when he gets really personal, Lincolns war?

Yes, the Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves, but only

the slaves in the secessionist South, where the proclamation had

absolutely no force of law. Where the proclamation could have had

some force of law, in the border states that didnt secede, such as

Maryland and Kentucky and Pennsylvania, it specifically

permitted slavery to continue.Humble? Yes, yes, Lincoln in his speeches and his personal

life dramatized an innate humility. But politically, when he won

the presidential nomination in 1860 here in Chicago, he had

demonstrated the political savvy and cruelty that exploited the

moment of the instance that he was nominated.

My point is this: Reasonable people and you wouldnt be a

Heartland person if you were anything but reasonable can

discuss and disagree about Lincoln and his legacy. But we dont

have to be disagreeable. We all share a common respect for


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INTRODUCTION

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individual liberty, small government, the rule of law, and firm

property rights.

Tonight well hear from two articulate and informed scholars

about whether and how those values played out in the life of

Abraham Lincoln.

Tonights Debate

Heres how the debate works. One debater, Tom DiLorenzo, willbegin with a 10-minute presentation on the subject at one podium.

The second debater, Joe Morris, will have an equal amount of time

at the other podium. My job is not to interfere with the free flow of

ideas.

While the debate is going on, please write any questions you

may have for either or both of the debaters on the cards available

from Heartland staffers in the room. After the presentations Ill

select some questions from the cards. Around 8:40 p.m. Ill signal

the last question.


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2 Thomas J. DiLorenzo, Ph.D. is the author ofLincoln Unmaskedand TheReal Lincoln, among other books, and an American economics professorat Loyola College in Maryland.

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Opening Statement

Lincoln: Foe of Freedom

By Thomas J. DiLorenzo2

I couldnt resist Joe Basts invitation to come to Chicago and

persuade 600 people from Illinois that Abe Lincoln was a tyrant

and an enemy of freedom. I thought that was going to be a real

challenge! So Ill get right to it.

Corwin Amendment

One of the first things Abraham Lincoln did after he was elected

and before he was inaugurated was to instruct William Seward

[U.S. Senator from New York] to get a constitutional amendment

through the Senate that would forbid the federal government fromever interfering with slavery in the South. And Seward did. It was

called the Corwin Amendment, named after [Ohio Republican

Congressman] Thomas Corwin.

Lincoln also instructed Seward to get a federal law passed that

would nullify the personal liberty laws that existed in some of the


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DILORENZO:FOE

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Destroying the Union

In terms of saving the Union, I contend Lincoln actually destroyed

the Union. The Union was a voluntary Union. The states ratified

the Constitution they were sovereign, thats why they had to

ratify the Constitution. But the Union was no longer voluntary

after 1865.

The parallel I think of is a woman who leaves her husband

because hes been abusing her. He drags her back into the home,

chains her to the bedpost, and threatens to shoot her if she leavesagain. The union has been preserved! Theyre back together again!

To me, that is the sense in which the Union was preserved, at the

cost of 620,000 lives.

For several generations, historians have referred to the

Lincoln dictatorship. One example is the historian Clinton

Rossiter, who was editor of The Federalist Papers in the 1950s

and 1960s; he was a Cornell University history professor. He said

this: Dictatorship played a decisive role in his successful effort to

maintain a union by force of arms. Lincolns amazing disregard for

the Constitution was considered by nobody as legal.

It doesnt sound like Lincoln was a friend of freedom if you

look at statements like this by distinguished scholars.

Lincoln the Dictator

Now why did people like Rossiter say things like that? I have here

a short list of some of the things Lincoln did to deserve that

reputation. (A student who likes my books attended a talk I gave at

Washington University; he made up a t-shirt that said, Dictator

To-Do List.)

1. The illegal suspension of the writ of habeous corpus on his

own. The Constitution allows for the suspension of the writ, but


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only by Congress. After he suspended the writ, Lincoln appointed

William Seward to be in charge of a sort-of KGB-style secret

police that rounded up anywhere between 15,000 and 30,000

Northern civilians for merely opposing the Lincoln administration.

These were not spies or traitors they were people like George

Brown, the mayor of Baltimore; Congressman Henry May of

Baltimore; and 20 members of the Maryland state legislature. Of

course, the Constitution requires the federal government to provide

for a republican form of government in the states, and so arrestingthose state and local elected officials was a direct denial of that

aspect of the Constitution.

There were Northern gulags like Fort Lafayette in New York

Harbor. It was said that the only place there was genuine free

speech in the North during the war was in these prisons, because

once youre imprisoned for free speech, what have you got to lose?

If you want to read about this I would recommend a book by

James Randall, Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln. Randall

taught at the University of Illinois for many years; James

McPherson calls him the preeminent Lincoln scholar of the last

generation. All these facts Im rattling off here are in this book,

among other places.

2. He shut down more than 300 opposition newspapers. Insome instances, the editors and owners were thrown into prison,

and in some instances there were mobs of sort-of Republican Party

activists who literally destroyed the printing presses of the

opposition press. They didnt destroy every last opposition press,

but they sent a pretty strong message.

3.He started a war without congressional approval.

4. He confiscated firearms in the border states. In fact, the

whole invasion of the South was a violation of the Second

Amendment. As James Madison said, the purpose of the Second


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DILORENZO:FOE

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Amendment was to deter a federal army from ever invading a

sovereign state.

5. Lincoln micro-managed the waging of war on civilians for

four long years. I make this case in my book, and I can make it if

we have questions later. James McPherson estimated that about

50,000 Southern civilians were killed by the Union army one way

or another during the war.

One anecdote that Ill offer: On one day, more than 4,000

artillery shells exploded in the city of Charleston, South Carolina at a time when there was no Confederate Army there. It was

civilians and maybe some wounded soldiers, and that was it. It was

not a a battle it was just the bombing of a city. And this went on

throughout the South.

6.All telegraph communication was censored.

7. He confiscated private property. Two confiscation acts

allowed the U.S. government to take the private property of people

who were criticizing the Lincoln administration.

8.He arrested his detractors. The most outspoken Democrat in

Congress at the time was Clement Vallandigham from Dayton,

Ohio. He made very stirring Jeffersonian-sounding speeches

criticizing the suspension of habeus corpus and other things. After

he was gerrymandered out of Congress by the Republican Party, hewent back home to Ohio to run for governor.

Sixty-seven armed federal soldiers broke into Vallandighams

home in the middle of the night. He was arrested and thrown in

prison. He ended up being deported and spent the rest of the war in

Canada. It would be as though President Bush had Hillary Clinton

deported to Iran.

Roger Taney, the chief justice, issued an opinion that the

suspension of habeus corpus by the presidnet alone is

unconstitutional. Lincoln responded by issuing an arrest warrant


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for Taney. He gave it to his friend and employee at the time, Ward

Lamon. There are several very good sources on this, like Ward

Lamons book, which is in the archives of the Huntington Library,

and the biography of Benjamin Robbins Curtis, who was a

supreme court justice who authored the opposing opinion in the

Dred Scott case and defended Andrew Johnson in his

impeachment.

9.He rigged Northern elections. West Virginia was allowed to

secede, illegally, from the rest of Virginia. The Constitutionrequires Congress and the state legislature to agree on partitioning

a state and creating a new state. That didnt happen. Northern

elections were rigged with the help of federal soldiers.

These are among the reasons why generations of historians

have referred to Lincoln as a dictator.

Jefferson on Secession

So what did Thomas Jefferson think about secession? He said if

the western part of the country ever seceded from the east, [t]hose

of the Western confederacy will be as much our children and

descendants as those of the Eastern. That was in 1804, many,

many years after the Declaration of Secession which was theDeclaration of Independence.

Contrast that with Lincoln. In his first inaugural address, when

discussing the possibility that states might secede, he used the

words invasion and bloodshed. He was the anti-Jefferson as

far as Im concerned.

In terms of economics, Lincoln was a mercantilist, so he was

against economic freedom. He was a protectionist, a champion of

corporate welfare, and a champion of inflationary finance through

central banking. He admitted that he spent his entire career as a


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DILORENZO:FOE

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Whig politician advocating those things.

That was essentially the political agenda of Alexander

Hamilton. I consider Lincoln to be the political son of Alexander

Hamilton. He opposed equality under the law. Despite a few

fanciful statements he made about equality, he said this to Stephen

Douglas in 1858, I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been,

in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political

equality of the white and black races.

All Created Equal?

Lincoln was a member of the Illinois Colonization Society, which

wanted to use state funds to deport the small number of free blacks

that were in the state out of the state. To some extent, they did that.

He also said in another debate with Douglas, The African (he

always referred to black people as the Africans, as though they

were from another planet) upon his own soil has all the natural

rights that that instrument [the Declaration of Independence]

vouchsafes to all mankind.

Lincoln said such things many times, that was his position.

Yes, blacks and whites can be equal, but not if blacks are here in

America. If theyre on their own soil, thats where they can beequal.

I think you have to understand that to understand what Lincoln

means when he quotes the Declaration of Independence. He voted

against black suffrage in Illinois, he opposed allowing blacks to

testify in court in Illinois, he voted against abolishing the slave

trade in Washington, DC while he was in Congress, he was a

strong supporter of the Fugitive Slave Act.

One of the reasons Lincoln gave for opposing the extension of

slavery into the territories was that he wanted to save the territories


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for free white people. It wasnt a moral reason, it was just

politics. The people in the territories wanted them to be all-white,

and so as a politician he thought there was a lot of votes there

among the Free Soil Party, so thats what he did.

Lincoln met with a group of free black men in the White House

in 1862, and he urged them to lead by example and go to Liberia.

Those men wisely said no thank you, because, as they explained

to him, some thousands of blacks had already gone to Liberia, but

most of them had perished. Lincoln told them their descendantswould ultimately outnumber them, if they were to go to Liberia

and procreate once they got there. It didnt seem like a good deal

to those men at the time, and they wisely rejected his advice.

Yes, Lincoln did quote the all men are created equal portion

of the Declaration of Independence in the Gettysburg Address.

But, as the great H.L. Mencken said, the Gettysburg Address was

poetry, not fact.

Mencken pointed out that it was the Confederates who were

fighting for government by consent: They no longer consented to

being ruled by Washington, DC. It was the Northern army that was

fighting against government by consent.

So those are some of the reasons I think Lincoln does not

deserve the reputation as a man of freedom.And by the way, all the other countries and regions and states

that ended slavery in the nineteenth century did so peacefully.

Britain, Spain, the Dutch, the French, the Danes, the New

Englanders, even New Yorkers. They all found a way to end

slavery peacefully.


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3 Joseph A. Morris, J.D., is president of the Lincoln Legal Foundation anda partner in the law firm of Morris & DeLaRosa, with offices in Chicagoand London.

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Opening Statement

Lincoln: Friend of Freedom

By Joseph A. Morris3

Ladies and gentlemen, Abe Lincoln was not perfect. Abe Lincoln

was a clever, calculating pol. Abe Lincoln was from Illinois ...

Whats news?

I think it is a healthy thing that the world recognize that no

politician is perfect, because it is a mistake, it is dangerous to

liberties, to translate political leadership into sainthood. It is a

mistake to think that political leaders are the source of salvation on

this Earth.

But once we recognize that, I think its important that we face

the facts and understand what principled and constructive and

accomplished political leadership is, and what it can do. Its onlyfair to recognize what Abraham Lincoln achieved for the people of

the United States, which in my view was to make real the promise

of the Declaration of Independence.


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Holding Lincoln to a Standard

Tom DiLorenzo, I think, has performed a real service by doing

something that other scholars who have been critical of Lincoln in

the past have not done. Other critics of Lincoln have complained

that he dithered over slavery, that he was too patient with his

generals, that he was either too much the politician or not enough,

that he was too lax with the South or not strict enough with the

South in the contemplation of Reconstruction.

What Tom DiLorenzo has done is something that, frankly, Ithink is unmatched in history since Lincoln had a critic by the

name of Douglas, who was a senator from Illinois, with whom he

debated in 1858 and whom he challenged for the presidency when

Douglas was the national candidate of the Democrats in 1860. Tom

DiLorenzo has tried to hold Lincoln to the standards of a lover of

liberty.

The challenge that DiLorenzo puts to President Lincoln is,

Well, where were you on this notion of equality that you think is

so important in the Declaration of Independence, that is the

centerpiece theme of your argument at Gettysburg? Where were

you on the question of the respect for civil liberties, which

presumably is the warp and woof of our constitutional system?

And where were you on the fundamental question of what is theUnited States of America, and what is the nature of this federation

of states, and what does it mean to have a constitution in a context

of an experiment by human beings to govern themselves?

Those are the right questions to ask, and those are the right

standards to which to hold Abraham Lincoln. Obviously, were

advocates of different points of view on the answers to those

questions, and you are the jury of history on the question of where

we come down on Abraham Lincoln against the DiLorenzo

yardstick.


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MORRIS:FRIEND

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I am here to argue facts for Abraham Lincoln, and lets begin with

some fundamentals.

Dedicated to a Proposition

Lincoln is perhaps best-known for those words he uttered at

Gettysburg. The opening lines that Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg are

ones we all remember ... and little understand. And I respectfully

submit that in those words with which Lincoln opened the addressat Gettysburg, you will see the essential kernel of Lincolns

understanding of what the American federation and nation is, and

why it ought to matter to those of us who are lovers of liberty.

Remember those words:

Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth

on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and

dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now, I think we all have some grasp of the proposition all men

are created equal. Let there be no doubt about it, Lincoln was an

opponent of slavery. He made it very clear throughout his career in

Illinois as a political man that he did not think it was right to liveoff the sweat of the brow of another. He told us over and over

again, as he would not be a slave, he would not be a master. We

understand that Lincoln was an advocate of the notion that all men

are created equal, even if that means that in a particular situation at

a particular time, they find themselves in a political society that

holds only imperfectly to that standard.

And I think we understand even the higher calling of his

argument, that this was a nation conceived in liberty and dedicated

to a proposition unlike the Danes and the Britons and the Irish


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and the French, and people all around the world, whose nationhood

was a fact of nature, it was an accident of history, it was a

condition they found upon them when they emerged into the

sunlight of civilization.

The American nation was something that was created as a

series of conscious acts, coming out of a revolutionary past, with

ideas in mind. What other nation can say as its birthright that its

dedicated to a proposition, rather than merely occupying a piece of

land or speaking a particular language or embracing a particularculture?

Lincoln told us that this was a nation dedicated to a

proposition, and by opening our eyes to that fact, if nothing else,

Lincoln deserves the undying gratitude of people who love liberty

the world over.

Brought Forth a Nation

But he also said they brought forth a nation. They brought forth a

nation. He didnt say they brought forth a contract. He didnt

say they brought forth a deal or a confederation. He said they

brought forth a nation.

And that is what the arithmetic compels you to conclude,because if you recall that he spoke at Gettysburg in 1863, and you

know from the Elizabethan English of the King James Bible what

fourscore and seven years means, you know that the calculation

from 1863 of fourscore and seven years takes us back not to the

constitutional ratification of 1789 or the constitutional convention

of 1787, but to the year of the declaration of American

independence, to the revolutionary year of 1776.

Why does it matter, in the mind of Lincoln or the minds of us

today, that there was a 13-year gap between the creation of a


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nation and the creation of its government? It matters because and

here is an important issue on which Tom DiLorenzo and I disagree

it matters because the point is that a nation and its government

are not the same thing.

The nation precedes the government. The government is the

creature and the servant and the subordinate of the nation. The

nation, the people of a nation, can bring a government into being

and they can change it ... and they did.

If you love liberty, the single most important gift to the humanspirit of Abraham Lincolns imagination was to nail down the

distinction between a people and its peoplehood and its

nationhood, on the one hand, and its political units and its

governmental distribution of powers, on the other.

Thats what Lincoln meant when he insisted that the Union

the nation, the American nation should be preserved.

Was Lincoln a willy-nilly Franklin Delano Roosevelt, an

advocate of a centralized national government with Hillary Clinton

as its philosopher queen ... as Tom DiLorenzo suggests in his

book,Lincoln Unmasked, where he elevates Hillary Clinton Im

not making this up to the apotheosis of a Yankee? What you

meant Tom, was the apotheosis of a Yankee fan.

In fact, as president of the United States, Lincoln was anextraordinarily circumspect chief executive who looked to the

Congress, to the Senate and the House, to take the lead on most

making of public policy. He saw his responsibility in a domestic

context as taking care that the laws be carefully executed.

Author of the Civil War?

Now lets turn to the central indictment Tom delivers against Mr.

Lincoln: that Mr. Lincoln was the author of the Civil War.


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Tom DiLorenzo told you about a lot of dancing and prancing

and political gimmickry on the part of Mr. Lincoln, both before

and after he became president and even as late as the Hampton

Roads conference. Its true. But the aims of Lincolns amazing

political maneuvering were never in doubt and they never varied:

To preserve the Union and end slavery.

With all due respect to Toms narrative, Mr. Lincoln did not in

fact urge the South to stay in the Union in exchange for forgoing

prohibitions on slavery. On the contrary, Mr. Lincoln disclosed, tothe shock of Alexander Stephens, that the Thirteenth Amendment

had been passed out of Congress and was on its way to ratification

by the states. The Thirteenth Amendment prohibits slavery

everywhere in the United States; it prohibits involuntary servitude

everywhere and forever.

Stephens was shocked by that, and that was the effect Lincoln

intended, because what Lincoln wanted to do was end the war and

stop the bloodshed. And he essentially said to Stephens at the

Hampton Roads conference, If I were you, Mr. Vice President of

the whatever-you-are, the rebellion, I would go back and tell your

brethren: Rejoin the Union. Drop your arms. I will not negotiate

with you as long as you are under arms. Rejoin the Union, send

your delegates back to Washington. I will embrace the states onceagain in their rightful places in the American federation. Send your

votes back youre not going to stop the ratification of the

Thirteenth Amendment, but I bet you can ensure that it is phased in

with all deliberate speed.

What was Lincoln attempting to do? He was attempting to stop

bloodshed. He knew that the train, which he helped leave the

station to end slavery was never coming back. Slavery was the

issue of the war.

And what about the start of that war? Facts that Tom


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DiLorenzo has a hard time answering are very simple. Mr. Lincoln

became president of the United States on the fourth day of March

in 1861. Prior to the end of February 1861, seven southern states

had already purported to secede. In early February 1861, the

Confederate so-called Congress had already convened in

Richmond. By the 18th and 19th of February 1861, Jefferson Davis

was already the president of the so-called Confederacy. Jeff Davis

was the rebel president before Abe Lincoln ever arrived in

Washington and took his oath of office as president of the UnitedStates.

If you want to know who started the Civil War, look south and

look to people who had one and only one issue maybe Tom and I

will get a chance to debate this. One and only one issue was the

real precipitant of that war, and it was the cause of slavery.


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Rebuttal

Thomas J. DiLorenzo

Well, Im sure Joe is not calling Lincoln a liar when he says

slavery was the only cause. Lincoln himself always said the

extension of slavery was what he was strenuously opposed to. He

explicitly said, at his first inaugural for example, that he had no

intent to disturb Southern slavery.

On the Gettysburg Address, fourscore and seven years ago, ofcourse thats not when the country was founded it was with the

Constitution. And yes, Lincoln said a nation was founded, but

the founders did not create a nation. They created a confederacy, a

union of states, but it wasnt a nation and there wasnt a national

government.

Do We Have a Nation?

Lincoln wanted it to be a national government. Alexander

Hamiltons agenda at the Constitutional Convention was to get a

permanent president who would appoint all the governors and have

veto power over all state legislation essentially a king. Thats

why Jefferson himself hated Alexander Hamilton. Ive just writtena book on this, calledHamiltons Curse, which is coming out next

year.


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But Hamiltonians never succeeded. They invented the myth

about 20 years later that America was created by the whole

nation, that the whole people created the Constitution, when in

reality, of course, it was the citizens of each individual state. And

when the King of England signed a peace treaty with the American

revolutionaries, he signed it with each individual state, named by

name. He didnt sign it with something called the United States

nation. That just didnt exist.

And so what Lincoln is doing in the Gettysburg Address, whenhe talks about a new nation, is putting in his own words this

myth that the country was created by the whole people and not by

political conventions of the citizens of the sovereign states. In fact,

the thinking of the Jeffersonians was that, if this constitution is

ever to be enforced, then the people themselves organized in

political communities at the state level is how it is to be enforced.

And if the day ever comes that the federal government becomes

the sole arbiter of the limits of its own powers, it will inevitably

decide that there are no limits to its own powers ... and thats what

we got after 1865, when through the federal judiciary, the federal

government has been since then the sole decision maker about the

limits of its own powers.

Jeffersonian Mantle

In What Lincoln Believed, Michael Lind makes the case that the

main reason Lincoln brought the all men are created equal

language into the Gettysburg Address is that he wanted to win

votes from the Jeffersonians in the North he wanted to wrap

himself in the Jeffersonian mantle.

If you read the whole Declaration of Independence, it is a

declaration of secession from the British Empire. Lincoln totally


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Rebuttal

Joseph A. Morris

This debate over the question of when America began is not mere

metaphysics. It really matters. I think it matters for the reasons that

Ive described, and I just urge you all: Go yourselves to the texts. I

carry around in my pocket my Cato Institute copy of the

Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Its there every

day, and I make my living with it.The Declaration of Independence opens with the immortal

words, When in the course of human events it becomes necessary

for one people to dissolve the political bands which have

connected them with another one people.

Already in 1776, the Congress assembled at Philadelphia was

exercising power by itself, without sending messengers back to

the 13 colonies to canvass the views of the leadership in the 13

colonies as to what this new emerging American nation

so-called by Benjamin Franklin was going to do. They identified

themselves as one people, a people not a government, but a

people.

And then they proceeded to spend the next 13 years

experimenting with the kind of governmental institutions that theythought would be most conducive to their happiness and to their

liberty.


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Madison on Secession

Now, Mr. Jefferson was blessed, as some great men are, by having

a great man at his right arm. And that great man was James

Madison who, probably more than anyone else, was responsible

for the form and text of the document that we revere as the

Constitution, as the fundamental law of our political regime, of our

government. And when, as Tom correctly told you, in the 1800s

Mr. Jefferson fulminated a bit off the ranch on the question of

secession, it was Mr. Madison who reined him in.Although he was a Jeffersonian Republican and a southern

agrarian and disliked Alexander Hamilton every bit as much as

Tom DiLorenzo or you or I might dislike Alexander Hamilton, it

was Mr. Madison who correctly pointed out to Jefferson and

attained Jeffersons concession, that the Constitution, which

contains no express provision opposing secession, contains no

express provision providing for it.

As a matter of fact, Madison pointed out to Jefferson, that to

allow what Mr. Calhoun wanted in South Carolina nullification

by the states of federal decisions or to allow the secession of an

individual state, would be to allow one state on its own to amend

the federal constitution, and that wasnt the deal. The deal from the

outset was, once you joined the federation as a political matter,you were bound by the three-fourths rule and you were bound by

the republican guarantee clause and you were bound by the

territorial provisions.

Remember, by the time we get to the Civil War, we have way

more than 13 states in the union. Where did those other states

come from? Those states were carved out of territories that had

been, in a sense, the common property of the original 13 states

acquired at various times and in various ways. If you are seceding,

do you get to take your share of those other derivative states and


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territories with you? Utter nonsense, Madison argued, and he

walked down the line of Jeffersons arguments and answered them,

and his answers stand today.

Supreme Court and State Sovereignty

Was it the Civil War that the turned the Supreme Court of the

United States into what it is today, the final arbiter of what the

Constitution means? Mr. DiLorenzo, Id like to introduce you to afellow by the name of John Marshall, and a decision of the

Supreme Court of the United States calledMarbury v. Madison in

1804.

By the time the Civil War arrived, that was already old law,

and it had been used and used over and over again by advocates of

the South and southern states in various contests and contexts

where they were challenging northern interests. That included the

case that, probably more than any other single episode in American

history of the era, was responsible for the launch of the war, and

that was theDred Scottdecision.

In that case, the Supreme Court of the United States the final

word of law in the United States, presided over by Chief Justice

Taney held ... and hows this for states rights? ... that a state inthe North, a state of free soil, a state that opposed slavery, was not

free to prohibit a southerner from passing through that state with

his chattel slaves in tow and in his possession, and to treat them as

slaves inside those states. There were no states rights for northern

states that opposed slavery.

As a matter of fact, Chief Justice Tawney held for the Court in

theDred Scottdecision in a decision that shocked the conscience

of the nation that Africans, black human beings, not only were

not but never could be citizens of the United States, or citizens of a


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state entitled to the privileges and immunities of a citizen of the

state. Whats that for states rights? In states like Illinois and

Indiana and New York and Connecticut and Massachusetts, which

back then were recognizing African-American people as citizens

with full rights and with immunities of a citizen in their states and

expecting those rights and privileges and immunities to be

respected in the other states as well under the supremacy clause

and the full faith and credit clause. Whats that for states rights?

Confederate Constitution

Dont look to the constitution of the Confederacy, much admired

by Tom DiLorenzo, for meaningful answers to those questions.

Because the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that that constitution,

for all its fancy rhetoric, was never successfully implemented by

the so-called lovers of liberty of the South which had, if you

want to get into the facts, a far larger, more brutal, and more

pervasive KGB and political suppression system than did anything

Mr. Lincoln or Secretary Seward imagined.


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Cross-Examination

Questions from the Audience

By Dan Miller

Miller: I am just stunned by the quality of these questions! Lets

get to as many as we can.

Tom DiLorenzo, please describe the academic and newspaper

efforts to create the Lincoln myth. Why is the media and the

academy so dedicated to creating that myth?

DiLorenzo: A lot of whats written about Lincoln sort of makes

him into a saint or god-like figure, which no politician should be

made out to be.

In any rankings by historians of the greatest presidents, Lincoln

and FDR are always at the top. Whoever is the most forceful chiefexecutive, who creates big government or starts a war, is a

war-time president those are always the presidents the historians

rank at the top.

And the journalists, of course, to the extent that they have any

education about this, they were educated by these same historians

who always rank FDR and Lincoln at the top. I imagine thats

where this comes from. A lot of the literature is deification of

Lincoln.

People have asked me if I think Lincoln should be at Mount


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Rushmore. I always say nobody should be on Mount Rushmore.

Its sort of a deification of politicians, which is a very unhealthy

thing for a society.

Miller:Joe Morris, our government is said to be a government of

checks and balances. But if a state cannot leave the Union, what

check is there?

Morris: States do and ought to have an enormous amount ofpower and responsibility in a federal system, and Mr. Madison, I

think very rightly, pointed out that the new United States of

America under the Constitution was not a unified, centralized

nation-state like France, nor was it an impossible, highly atomized

mere federation like the Articles of Confederation attempted to be,

the Confederacy attempted to be, or some other con-federated

systems in human history attempted to be.

It was something altogether new. It was a notion of divided and

shared sovereignty that is, on some level, each state is sovereign,

and on some level, the national government is sovereign. There is a

unified sovereignty of the American people, that in turn is

distributed on a subsidiary basis, in part to the government at the

national level and in part to the governments at the state level.There are some functions that states ought to have that ought

not to be functions of the federal government. The Constitution

attempts to enumerate the federal governments powers.

Public pressure, the pressure of constituencies of interest

groups, for a century and more has attempted to press the federal

government to take over those responsibilities from the states.

People who love liberty will and ought to press in the opposite

direction.

But let me tell you one thing: The doctrine of states rights


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CROSS-EXAMINATION

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ought to be a doctrine of honor and sincere profession in this

country. The notion of states rights those words should be

honorable words, they should be on the lips of defenders of liberty.

But states rights, in the modern political context, have an acid

taste to them, because southern lovers of slavery and southern

opposition to the equality of human beings, for more than a

century, before and after Mr. Lincolns time, tried to hide behind

the rights and proper powers of sovereign states to perpetuate those

inequalities.

Miller: Tom, Jefferson Davis said that blacks must be integrated

into the society, must be allowed to work, save money, buy

property. Abe Lincoln said that all blacks should be sent back to

Africa. Whose approach won, who triumphed?

DiLorenzo: Im not necessarily a defender of the Confederacy,

any more than a critic of FDR is a defender of Hitler. Keep in mind

my book is about Lincoln, its not a defense of anything the

Confederate government has done.

I do defend the right of secession, and I think I devote one page

to the Confederate government, where I compare their constitution

to the U.S. Constitution. The people who are trying to smear me bycalling me a neo-Confederate make this assumption that if you

criticize Lincoln youre a defender of the Confederacy. Thats like

saying a critic of FDR is a defender of Hitler and Mussolini, and

thats just not right.

Miller:Joe, why not let the South secede? Wouldnt the North be

in a better position to end slavery once the North was free from the

Fugitive Slave Act?


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Morris: One reason is that you would have left a quasi-totalitarian

regime in power in the South, and it would be immediately next

door to the United States, and that would not be a healthy thing.

Miller: Tom, did Lincoln not clearly show, in his second inaugural

address, that both sides had significant responsibility for the war

and the deaths?

DiLorenzo: That may be his most celebrated speech. People havewritten entire books about that speech.

In the second inaugural address, Lincoln said the war came

which is a real cop-out, isnt it? He just happened to be sitting

there in his office one day and holy cow, the war came and then

he blames the whole thing on God and absolves himself. He said

the war was Gods punishment for the sin of slavery, and both

North and South were responsible. He blamed the whole thing on

God.

And keep in mind that New York City didnt abolish slavery

until 1852, and New Hampshire passed a law ending slavery in

1857.

Miller:Joe, if Wisconsin were allowed to secede today, would youregard it as appropriate to send our boys to shoot people from

Wisconsin?

Morris: A very simple answer, and its the answer of Sumter:

Only if they shot first. Its the answer that should have been given

at Waco.

Thats what we had at Waco, some lunatics who were seceding

from the United States in their little compound. It was absolute

madness to invade that compound. You had the compound


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CROSS-EXAMINATION

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encircled, you essentially have them in prison. All you had to do

was just sit there.

An attempt by Wisconsin or any other state to secede would

not be harmless. It would not be without injury to the rights of

Americans in Wisconsin or people elsewhere in the other 49 states

with absolute rights and privileges in the state of Wisconsin. So it

would not be harmless, and it ought to be resisted.

There are many ways in which to resist it. There are legal ways

to resist it. There are economic ways to resist it. There are violentways to resist it. My answer on the question of violence is, theres

no need to resist any such act, any such political or other act, by

violence unless violence is initiated by other Americans.

Im not admitting the legitimacy of a peaceful secession I am

saying a peaceful secession is an absolute absurdity in modern

America, but it does not need a violent response. A nonviolent

secession in modern America is doomed to failure.

DiLorenzo: Thank God the Russians had Gorbachev and not

Lincoln. Fifteen republics peacefully seceded. Of course, I would

not send troops into Wisconsin to keep them from seceding. It

would be barbarianism to do such a thing.

Miller: Tom, why didnt Lincoln use the courts?

DiLorenzo: Because he knew he would lose.

Thats why they never tried Jefferson Davis they had him

imprisoned, but they never tried him. One of the most prominent

lawyers in New York City at the time, Charles OConor, offered to

defend him pro bono. The trial would have been in Virginia. I

think they knew they would not have won on the issue of the

constitutionality of secession, and they didnt want to lose through


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the courts what they had just gained through 620,000 deaths.

Miller: Its just amazing to me the integration, the hard drives of

the people of The Heartland Institute and indeed, of all people of

libertarian persuasion. All of the questions I have here are

remarkable. Nevertheless, this is the last question.

Tom, and then Joe: What would the United States look like today if

the South had been allowed to secede peacefully?

DiLorenzo: Theres a new book out by Charles Adams, titled

When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for

Southern Secession. Its a collection of European essays on the

Civil War. Its really fascinating: Charles Dickens is in there.

All of these authors, from England, France, Greece all over

Europe seem to recognize that when the South seceded it

nullified the Fugitive Slave Act, and that was a law that socialized

the cost of slavery. It forced the northern states to run down

runaway states, and they returned most of them to their owners.

Thats why the underground railroad ended up in Canada. And

these European authors recognized that this would break the back

of slavery. Regardless of what the Southerners were saying, theseEuropean authors thought the smarter ones surely had to

understand that this really was the end of slavery.

In my opinion, a real statesman could have sped that up by

offering compensated emancipation of some form, like the rest of

the world had done. Slavery could have been ended very quickly

and peacefully. Lincoln talked about it a lot, but he never used his

legendary political skills to actually get it done. He went to war

instead.


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I think the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century

was a time of consolidated government power in Germany, in

Russia, and everywhere else where centralized, monopolistic

bureaucracies were created. The United States would have been

the one counter-example of decentralization and federalism that

was allowed to work for the rest of the world to see. Today, we

usually hold up Switzerland as an example of that.

I think allowing secession would have tempered the

imperialistic proclivities of the U.S. government. We wouldnthave had the Spanish-American War, for example. Just as the

secession of Wisconsin would temper the proclivities of the U.S.

government to tax the pants off everybody, like its doing now.

That was always the idea behind secession, or the threat of

secession.

And if we hadnt gotten into the Spanish-American War, I

doubt we would have had a Woodrow Wilson to plunge us into

World War I, and without World War I there probably wouldnt

have been a World War II. I also think the two sides of the country

could have reunited if they thought it was in their interest to do so.

Morris: Lets make sure we got that straight: Abraham Lincoln is

responsible for World War II ...Tom DiLorenzo argues in his books that if the South had won

the Civil War, the shame of slavery could not have survived. It

didnt make economic sense for the South, he writes.

I respectfully submit that any survival of slavery after 1865

in fact, the survival of slavery into 1865 was a shame and a

scandal on its face and a denial of American principles. That it

could be acceptable that slavery would last into the last third of the

nineteenth century is just completely unacceptable to me.


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Had the South succeeded in its rebellion and its secession, I

dont think the North would have gone a merry and homogenous

way. Had this precedent of secession been successfully

established, I think we would have seen an atomization of the rest

of the North. I think the New England secession would have

occurred. I think the Mid-Atlantic states would have gone their

own ways. The West never would have been opened as the West

was opened, as the American West.

Spain and Mexico would still have significant presences inNorth America, and the dominant power in North America would

probably be a very strong British Empire. There would have been

by the early twentieth century no arsenal of democracy to resist

World War I as if Woodrow Wilson and the United States started

World War I?

If there had been no United States, including a strong and

economically vibrant, decidedly American, South, then, by the

middle of the twentieth century, there would have been no leader

of the West, no America to defeat the Nazis and ultimately to

defeat the Communists.

So in my view, if the rebellion had succeeded, if secession had

been established as a viable precedent for the United States of

America, the lamp would have gone out on the hilltop, and theexperiment in human self-government would have failed.


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Joseph A. Morris is a partner in the law firm of Morris &

DeLaRosa, with offices in Chicago and London. He maintains an

active practice, conducting trials and appeals, particularly in the

areas of constitutional, business, labor, administrative, and

international law. He is a member of the bar of the Supreme Court

of the United States, the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois, and

several other courts.

Joe serves pro bono publico as president and general counsel

of the Lincoln Legal Foundation which tells you where hescoming from! and hes an active member of many other civic,

charitable, and other organizations.

Joe served under President Ronald Reagan as assistant attorney

general and director of the Office of Liaison Services at the U.S.

Department of Justice. He also has been an American delegate to

the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. He

is a national director of the American Conservative Union and has

been chairman and president of the United Republican Fund of

Illinois.

A frequent lecturer and debater, Joe appears often on national

and local television and radio.


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The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit public policyresearch organization based in Chicago. Founded in 1984, its

mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions

to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental

choice in education, market-based approaches to environmental

protection and health care finance, tax and spending limitation, and

deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better

job than government bureaucracies.

Heartland publishes books and policy studies, hosts an online

clearinghouse for public policy research and commentary called

PolicyBot, organizes events featuring experts on public policy

issues, and supports a growing network of prominent senior

fellows.

Heartlands unique contribution to the national debate overpublic policy is its series of five monthly public policy

newspapers: Budget & Tax News, Environment & Climate News,

Health Care News,InfoTech & Telecom News, and School Reform

News. These publications feature the best work of the countrys

leading think tanks and present research and commentary as news.

Heartland sends these public policy newspapers to every stateand national elected official in the U.S., plus 8,440 local officials,

2,000 journalists, and thousands of subscribers, Heartland

supporters, and opinion leaders.


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More than 130 academics and professional economists

participate in Heartlands peer review process, and nearly 100

experts on the staffs of other think tanks serve as contributing

editors of Heartlands publications. Approximately 500 state

legislators serve on Heartlands Board of Legislative Advisors,

providing feedback and guidance to Heartland staff. A 15-member

Board of Directors oversees a staff of 35.

Heartlands annual budget of approximately $7 million is

funded by 2,100 donors. No corporate donor gives more than5 percent. Contributions are tax deductible under Section 501(c)3

of the Internal Revenue Code.

For more information, contact The Heartland Institute,

19 South LaSalle #903, Chicago, IL 60603, phone 312/377-4000,

fax 312/377-5000, or visit http://www.heartland.org.


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Documents

Abraham Lincoln: Friend or Foe of Freedom?