The Real Real Lincoln

The Heritage Foundation has just published a great essay by Lincoln scholar Allen Guelzo on whether or not Lincoln was the true progenitor of the unlimited government we have today.  Guelzo writes this in response both to the use of Lincoln by modern liberals and recent libertarian and conservative scholarship--and I use the term loosely--on the supposed racist tyrant that was Lincoln.  The latter can be best seen in the unfortunately widely-read Politically Incorrect Guide (P.I.G.) to American History, P.I.G. to the Constitution, P.I.G. on the South, and P.I.G. to the Civil War. 

Here is the abstract so that you can get a flavor of the essay:

Early Progressives co-opted Abraham Lincoln’s legacy to justify their program of expansive government powers over American life. In so doing, they obscured how their philosophy of government broke with Lincoln and the Founding to which he was heir. Nevertheless, much conservative and libertarian thinking today has assumed, at once and without serious reflection, that the Progressives’ appropriation of Lincoln (and the continued appropriation of Lincoln by the American Left) was legitimate—rather like mistaking a hostage taken by terrorists to be one of the terrorists himself. But Abraham Lincoln is not, and nor was his Administration, any model for what today seems so objectionable in the modern welfare state. His unwavering commitment to natural rights and the Constitution’s framework of limited government, as well as the comparatively limited forces he called into the defense of the nation during the Civil War, not only place him in philosophical opposition to the Left, but dispel any notions that he set the stage for the expansion of government in the 20th century.

Also see Guelzo's Lincoln's Emaciation Proclamation.  It is the best book ever written on the subject.