Some Folks Just Don't Like "Lincoln's Marxists"

by Al Benson Jr. When Donnie Kennedy and I started working on our book "Lincoln's Marxists" we realized there would be some people who would disagree with the material we had researched and presented. A handful of book reviews of it have been posted on the Internet that I am aware of. Most of those have been positive in nature and I am appreciative of that, and of the folks that took the time and trouble to write them. A few have been less than positive, but at least no one has taken a shot at us yet and we are thankful for that blessing. A review appeared recently that was, shall we say, interesting. In commenting on Donnie and I the reviewer said: "So basically, we have two well-known ultra-right-wingers trying to defame yet another Liberal Icon...Abraham Lincoln. The RightWingBooks people have done this to FDR, JFK, LBJ and many others." This is interesting, in that the reviewer correctly places Lincoln among the ranks of the liberal icons. Contrary to many patriotic people who sincerely believe that Lincoln was some sort of ultra-conservative, he really belongs among those liberal icons, none of which can be totally passed off to people anymore as untarnished angels. The reviewer is correct here. Then he goes on to list three things that "these people" (the right-wingers) believe. Here again, he gets part of it right, but not all. He states that we believe "The South was right in their noble fight against 'Northern Aggression'." A lot of us do believe that, Donnie and I among them, so I guess I plead guilty here. After all, years ago now Donnie and his brother, Ron, wrote a book called "The South Was Right" which was a best seller. So I guess you would have to say he thought the South was right. But I know a lot of conservative and patriotic people who do not believe that and some who believe that Lincoln was the greatest thing since sliced bread. So the reviewer is half right. Another of those things we are all supposed to believe is that "African-Americans were 'better off' as slaves." I don't know where he came up with that one. There probably is a handful of people somewhere in the country that believes that but that belief is hardly indicative of the vast majority of those who are on the right politically and/or theologically, and it surely is not something I believe. As an aside, but in the same vein, about four years ago someone sent Wikipedia an article about me which they posted. According to the article on Wikipedia, I had been the head of the "Southern Party" (a group I have never belonged to) and I had advocated a "return to slavery" which I never have). I don't know if the person who wrote this diatribe and submitted it to Wikipedia really believed all that or if it was a deliberate smear attempt. At any rate, I posted an article on my website http://www.albensonjr.com which I entitled "Wikidrivel." My webmaster also contacted Wikipedia and informed them what a bunch of horseradish their article was. They removed it. But it seems that there are some folks out there who will read something you have written and totally misread what you really meant or said and they come away with some half-baked notion that is as far away from reality as you can get. I have run into that situation more than once. However, to return to "Lincoln's Marxists" our reason for writing the book had very little to do with the slavery question. Oh sure, it is mentioned in the book, as are the abolitionists, along with a lot of other issues. But our main intent was to help people to become aware of the influential socialists and communists in both Lincoln's armies and in the early days of the Republican Party. These are issues the "history" books hardly ever touch and we felt they needed to be addressed. If we do not really grasp what happened during the War Between the States then we will not truly grasp all that has happened since. Apparently, in this case, the reviewer did not agree with us. I wonder what his views on the socialist and communist penetration of the early Republican Party are, or would he consider it a smear to suggest such?