Lincolnian Spirt of Conquest...?

President McKinley

In the alternate historical world invented by Thomas J. DiLorenzo (TJD) in The Real Lincoln (http:/www.amzn.com/0761526463) slavery turns into liberty, secession is freedom, justice becomes tyranny and Lincoln is equated with V. I. Lenin.  TJD smears Lincoln by associating him with many historical events which occurred after his assassination.  Thus Lincoln is responsible for all of the abuses of Reconstruction, the decimation of the Plains Indians and, most amusingly, the Spanish-American war.

Here is what TJD has to say about the later...

Major McKinley (Lincoln's Bitch?)

"The Lincolnian spirit of conquest, subjugation and imperialism was evident when the army, under the direction of William McKinley (a major in Lincoln's army during the War between the states) took over the Philippines in the late nineteenth century, resulting in the slaughter of some three thousand Filipinos.  This occupation was a consequence of the Spanish-American War, instigated by the United States government, after which Spain ceded to the United States ownership of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands, thus allowing the government to consolidate its empire in the Western hemisphere and establish a stepping-stone to the Chinese markets (such as they were) at last."

Close readers of this blog may recall my earlier post "Remember the Maine, but Forget the War Lovers" from February 20, 2012).  Therein, I mentioned the fact that three out of four US naval inquiries into the cause of the explosion on board the USS Maine, including the most recently conducted study by the National Geographic, determined that external causation (a bomb) was responsible for the sinking of the battlecruiser Maine in Havanna harbor.  It is, therefore, doubtful that the United States government did "instigate" the Spanish-American War.  The notion that Lincoln, who died on April 15th, 1865, was responsible for McKinley's decision to go to war in 1898 because he served as a major in the US Civil War is absurd.

Reviews of The Real Lincoln...

http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.736/article_detail.asp

http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?a=79