Daily Bell: Remind our readers about one of your central intellectual passions, which is confronting academic "Lincoln revisionism." Who was Lincoln really and why have you spent so much of your career trying to return Lincoln's academic profile to reality?

Thomas DiLorenzo: Lincoln mythology is the ideological cornerstone of American statism. He was in reality the most hated of all American presidents during his lifetime according to an excellent book by historian Larry Tagg entitled The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln: America's Most Reviled President. He was so hated in the North that the New York Times editorialized a wish that he would be assassinated.