Thomas DiLorenzo

Thomas James DiLorenzo (born August 8, 1954) is an author and former university economics professor who is the President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

He has written books denouncing President Abraham Lincoln.

He is a research fellow at The Independent Institute, Board of Advisors member at CFACT, and an associate of the Abbeville Institute.

He identifies with the Austrian School of economics.

He has spoken in favor of secession and has been described as an ally of, or part of, the neo-Confederate movement.

Thomas James DiLorenzo grew up in western Pennsylvania, descended from Italian immigrants.

In an essay he attributed his individualism to playing sports.

He began to study libertarianism in college.

He has a BA in Economics from Westminster College in Pennsylvania.

He holds a PhD in Economics from Virginia Tech.

DiLorenzo has taught at the State University of New York at Buffalo, George Mason University, and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

He is a former adjunct fellow of the Center for the Study of American Business at Washington University in St. Louis.

From 1992 to 2020, he was a professor of economics at Loyola University Maryland Sellinger School of Business.

DiLorenzo's book The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War is a critical biography published in 2002.

Writing for The Daily Beast, Rich Lowry described DiLorenzo's technique in this book as the following: "His scholarship, such as it is, consists of rummaging through the record for anything he can find to damn Lincoln, stripping it of any nuance or context, and piling on pejorative adjectives. In DiLorenzo, the Lincoln-haters have found a champion with the judiciousness and the temperament they deserve."

In a review published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, David Gordon described DiLorenzo's thesis: Lincoln was a "white supremacist" with no principled interest in abolishing slavery, and believed in a strong central government that imposed high tariffs and a nationalized banking system.

He attributes the South's secession to Lincoln's economic policies rather than a desire to preserve slavery.

Gordon quotes DiLorenzo: "slavery was already in sharp decline in the border states and the upper South generally, mostly for economic reasons".

Reviewing for The Independent Review, the magazine of The Independent Institute, a think tank associated with DiLorenzo, Richard M. Gamble of Palm Beach Atlantic University said that the book "manages to raise fresh and morally probing questions" and that DiLorenzo "writes primarily not as a defender of the Old South and its institutions, culture, and traditions, but as a libertarian enemy of the Leviathan state" but bemoans that DiLorenzo was "careless" in his handling of sources and despite his "evident courage and ability", his execution was lacking.

Gamble concludes that the book is a "travesty of historical method and documentation".

He said the book was plagued by a "labyrinth of [historical and grammatical] errors", and that DiLorenzo has "earned the... ridicule of his critics."

In a review for the Claremont Institute, historian Ken Masugi writes that "DiLorenzo adopts as his own the fundamental mistake of leftist multi-culturalist historians: confusing the issue of race with the much more fundamental one, which was slavery."

He noted that in Illinois "the anti-slavery forces actually joined with racists to keep their state free of slavery, and also free of blacks."

Masugi called DiLorenzo's work "shabby" and stated that DiLorenzo's treatment of Lincoln was "feckless" and that the book is "truly awful".

In 2002, DiLorenzo debated Claremont Institute fellow professor Harry V. Jaffa on the merits of Abraham Lincoln's statesmanship before and during the Civil War.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) in 2004 described DiLorenzo as one of 10 key ideologues in the neo-Confederate movement.

DiLorenzo writes about what he calls "the myth of Lincoln" in American history and politics.

He has said, "Lincoln is on record time after time rejecting the idea of racial equality. But whenever anyone brings this up, the Lincoln partisans go to the extreme to smear the bearer of bad news."

DiLorenzo has spoken out in favor of the secession of the Confederate States of America, defending the right of these states to secede from an abolitionist perspective.

He has described himself as a historical revisionist.

He has called the American Civil War the "War for Southern Independence".

DiLorenzo is critical of Alexander Hamilton's financial views, the concept of "implied powers" in the Constitution, the existence of a federal bank, and the use of Keynesian economics to increase the national debt.

DiLorenzo is critical of neoconservatism and military interventionism.

DiLorenzo has written extensively on Abraham Lincoln.

According to one historian, "Most historians are inclined to dismiss DiLorenzo as a crackpot. But... his books generally sell better than those of academic 'Lincolnologists' and... [his] views help lay the foundation for conservative political action today", historian David Blight has recently suggested that we ignore these writings at our peril."

He was listed as an affiliated scholar though 2009 of the Institute for the Study of Southern Culture, which is run by the League of the South, a neo-Confederate group.

As of 2020, DiLorenzo was no longer listed as active faculty at Loyola University, and instead as a professor emeritus.

He is a research fellow at the Independent Institute.

DiLorenzo is a speaker at Mises Institute events and teaches some of its online courses.

He writes for the blog LewRockwell.com.