Andrew Leonard: The Bizarre Conspiracy Theory About Abraham Lincoln

Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.

At Salon, we try to keep abreast of as many currently percolating conspiracy theories as possible....

Even with this background in mind, I still probably should not have engaged with a correspondent who wanted me to write a story about a photograph purported to be of a "young Jewish-looking Abraham Lincoln." When I asked what relevance a revisionist reading of Lincoln's religion or ethnicity might have to the historical record, I was informed that a) "he would want to free the black slaves because his ancestors were traumatized about being slaves in Egypt" and b) "he would try to help the European Jews (Rothschilds) in taking over the United States by starting a war and having Americans fight one another while they take control of our banking system."...

But if you dig a little deeper on the specific accusation that the Rothschild motivation for starting the Civil War was to take over the U.S. banking system, you suddenly find yourself facing a set of concerns that are surprisingly close to the surface of contemporary political discourse involving the national debt and monetary policy....

If you listen to some of the more wild-eyed libertarian voices out there, you will find that it is at this point that America really went off the tracks. Abraham Lincoln centralized government control over the money supply! And freedom died. We lost our bearings during the Civil War and have never managed to find our way back....