With the new movies and books by powerful central government sycophants such as Steven Spielberg and Bill O’Reilly, the deification and idolization of Abraham Lincoln continues. What is it about Lincoln that appeals to people from both sides of the political spectrum? Republicans call themselves the “Party of Lincoln” and hold fundraisers each year celebrating their very beginnings with Lincoln while Left-leaning Democrats like Obama and Mario Cuomo love to be compared to him and claim were Lincoln alive today he would be a “social democrat.”

Boiled down and crystallized to its purest form, the worship of Lincoln centers around the very essence of his political theory which was expressed in his First Inaugural Address: Pay your taxes or die.

Tariffs were part and parcel of the Republican Party Platform of 1860. Lincoln’s official campaign poster had as its theme “Protection for Home Industry.” Shortly before assuming office Lincoln said in a speech in Pittsburg that no issue was more important than raising the Federal Tariff. Also, just days before Lincoln took office, the Morrill Tariff was signed into law. This Tariff more than doubled the tariff rates which were responsible for over 90% of federal revenues at that time.

In Lincoln’s First Inaugural Address he embraced the institution of slavery endorsing the Corwin Amendment This Amendment to the Constitution would have held slavery in perpetuity in our country. Lincoln was instrumental in getting this Amendment to the states for ratification. The book, Team of Rivals by Court Historian, Doris Kearns-Goodwin, reportedly the basis for the new movie on Lincoln by Steven Spielberg, states on page 296, “He (Lincoln) instructed Seward (then a Senator from New York who would become Lincoln’s Secretary of War) to introduce these proposals in the Senate Committee of Thirteen without indicating they issued from Springfield (Illinois). The first resolved that ‘the Constitution should never be altered so as to authorize Congress to abolish or interfere with slavery in the states.’” The second proposal was that “All state personal liberty laws in opposition to the Fugitive Slave Law be repealed.” Somehow this inconvenient fact is not mentioned in the new Lincoln movie or in O’Reilly’s book.

Lincoln is falsely idolized in this country by many, including most politicians from both sides of the political spectrum, because he is credited with prosecuting a war that led to the abolition of slavery. Ironically, before the states of Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas seceded in the spring of 1861, there were more slaves in the Union than the Confederacy. It should be noted that the aforementioned states only seceded after being ordered by Lincoln to supply troops to invade the Southern states that had previously seceded.

Lincoln, while embracing eternal slavery, did warn the states “in rebellion” that he would invade and wage war on those states which refused to pay their tariff. Here in his Inaugural Address he states his intentions:” …In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”

Tariffs imposed by the federal government not only accounted for most of the federal budget, they also raised the price of imported goods to a point where the products of lesser quality being made in the northeast could be made competitive for sale in the South. Those In the North knew the consequences of the Southern States being allowed to secede: In March 1861, the New York Evening Post editorialized on this point:

“That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe. There will be nothing to furnish means of subsistence to the army; nothing to keep our navy afloat; nothing to pay the salaries of public officers; the present order of things must come to a dead stop.”

There we have it; Lincoln is a hero to members of both political parties, not because he freed a race of people but because he created a strong central government which was willing to go to war against its own citizens in order to collect taxes. It is of no coincidence that Lincoln was also the father of the income tax and the IRS. That is the reason for his “throne” in DC, not his feelings for the black race whom he was willing to sell into slavery forever.