Thomas James DiLorenzo (born August 8, 1954) is an American economics professor at Loyola University Maryland. He is an adherent of the Austrian School of Economics. He is a senior faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute and an associated scholar of the Abbeville Institute. He was formerly an affiliated scholar of the League of the South Institute, the research arm of the pro-secession League of the South (though he has denied any lasting affiliation, noting that he only gave a few lectures there shortly after its founding). He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Tech.

DiLorenzo has devoted much effort to scholarly historical revisionism, focusing on what has been called "the Lincoln Cult" as a political and historical phenomenon. In the same vein, he has spoken out in favor of the secession of the Confederate States of America, defending the right of these states to secede in a view similar to that of abolitionist Lysander Spooner. He has also criticized the crediting of the New Deal for ending the Great Depression.

Abraham Lincoln ⁱ/ˈeɪbrəhæm ˈlɪŋkən/ (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through its greatest constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union while ending slavery, and promoting economic and financial modernization. Reared in a poor family on the western frontier, Lincoln was mostly self-educated. He became a country lawyer, a Whig Party leader, Illinois state legislator in the 1830s, and a one-term member of the United States House of Representatives in the 1840s. After a series of debates in 1858 that gave national visibility to his opposition to the expansion of slavery, Lincoln lost a Senate race to his arch-rival Stephen A. Douglas. Lincoln, a moderate from a swing state, secured the Republican Party nomination. With almost no support in the South he swept the North and was elected president in 1860. His election was the signal for seven southern slave states to declare their secession from the Union and form the Confederate States of America. The departure of the Southerners gave Lincoln's party firm control of Congress, but no formula for compromise or reconciliation was found. And the war came.