Lincoln Unbound (29 page)

150 one-­third as many public schools: North,
Economic Growth
, 133.

151 raged much more widely: Fehrenbacher's
Prelude
, 100-­07, Guelzo's
Lincoln and Douglas
,
75-­106, 153-­54, 164, 189, 213, and ­Burlingame's
A Life
, 473, all have telling and vivid details about the pageantry and the circumstances surrounding the debates.

158 into the Gulf States: Foner's
Fiery
, 72, spells out the mixed record after the Founding.

159 Louisiana generously passed a law: Nevins's
Emergence
,
151-­52, and Fogel's
Without Consent
, 398, describe the crackdown.

162 banned blacks: Foner's
Fiery
, 8-­13, and Burlingame's
A Life
,
104, recount the anti-­black laws of states where Lincoln resided.

164 More ­people voted: Fehrenbacher's
Prelude
, 114-­15, describes the results.

C
HAPTER 5

167 wrote the first draft: Burlingame,
A Life
,
Vol. 2
, 738.

168 the South felt squeezed: McCardell's
Southern Nation
, 23, Michael Lind's
Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States
(New York: HarperCollins, 2012), 121–33, and Walter A. McDougall's
Throes of Democracy: The American Civil War Era, 1829–1877
(New York: HarperCollins, 2007), 340, recount the demographic shift against the South.

169 “a cordon of free States”: Richard Franklin Bensel's
Yankee Leviathan: The Origins of Central State Authority in America, 1859–1877
(­Cambridge, Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1990), 20–31, 65–­66, and Levine's
Half
, 42–44, as well as Nevin's
Emergence
, 334, and ­McDougall's
Throes
, 397, spell out the South's fear, vulnerabilities, and priorities.

170 King Cotton: Charles A. and Mary R. Beard,
The Rise of American Civilization
(New York: MacMillan Company, 1927), 55-56, and Mark Thornton and Robert B. Ekelund Jr.,
Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War
(Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2004), 30-31, describe the nature and extent of the cotton economy, as do Taylor's
Transportation
, 185-86, and Levine's
Half
, 21.

171 The grass didn't grow: I draw on the comparative statistics in Richard N. Current's “God and the Strongest Battalions,” in
Why the North Won the Civil War
, ed. David Herbert Donald (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1996), 21. Also, those in Levine's
Half,
41, 70, the Beards'
American Civilization
, 55, Crump's
World
, 127, and Kennedy's
Rise
, 180.

172 “a free-­labor empire”: McDougall,
Throes
, 399-­400.

172 “widen and defend”: Hacker,
Triumph
,
336.

172 a transcontinental railroad: Although I draw on others, the most important source in this passage is Heather Cox Richardson's
Greatest
, chapter six, “ ‘It Was Statemanship to Give Treeless Prairies Value': The Transcontinental Railroad.”

174 the nation's banking: Bensel in his chapter, “Gold, greenbacks, and the political economy of finance capital after the Civil War,” and Richardson in her chapter, “ ‘A Centralization of Power Such as Hamilton Might Have Eulogised as Magificent': Monetary Legislation,” are important sources for this section. I also found helpful Richard H. Timberlake,
Monetary Policy in the United States: An Intellectual and Institutional History
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).

175 a sweeping protective tariff: Again, Richardson is an important source in this section, this time in her chapter, “ ‘Directing the Legislation of the Country to the Improvement of the Country': Tariff and Tax Legislation.”

176 a land-­grant college bill: Richardson's chapter “ ‘A Large Crop is More Than a Great Victory': Agricultural Legislation” is a source of this passage, as well as Dennis W. Johnson,
The Laws That Shaped America: Fifteen Acts of Congress and Their Lasting Impact
(New York: Routledge, 2009) and his chapter, “The Promise of Land: The Homestead Act of 1862 and the Morrill Land-­Grant College Act of 1862.”

177 the Homestead Act: The same chapters of Richardson and Johnson apply here, too. Burlingame's
A Life
, 51, makes the point that Lincoln was never a great enthusiast for the reform. Fogel's
Without Consent
, 350-­52, and Bensel's
Yankee
, 73, are good on the Southern opposition.

179 ran free of government controls: Bensel's
Yankee
makes a persuasive case, 94-­98.

179 bureaucratic control and government expropriation: Bensel's
Yankee
describes this in detail in the chapter, “War Mobilization and state formation in the northern Union and the southern Confederacy.” It is also a thread in the Richard Current chapter “God and the Strongest Battalions,” and Thornton and Ekelund's,
Tariffs
.

180 “One of the great ironies”: Bensel,
Yankee
,
13-­14.

180 as well as could be expected: McDougall's
Throes
, 445-­46, describes the calamitous state of the Confederate economy. Thornton and ­Ekelund's
Tariffs
discusses the inflation, 59, 74-­75. Phillips's ­
Cousins
, 477-­78, and McPherson's
Second
, 38, catalogue the devastation wrought in the South by the war, as does Gordon's
Empire
, 202.

181 The North's advantages: Kennedy's
Rise
, 179-­81, and McDougall's
Throes
, 455, 494, catalogue the continued growth of the North.

182 alternative future of a Slave South: Fogel's
Without Consent
has a fascinating counter-­factual analysis of what Southern victory would have meant, 413-­16. Phillips's
Cousins
, 462-­63, and McDougall's
Throes
, 454, detail the disastrous political consequences of the war for the South.

184 began to retreat: Gordon's
Empire
, 194, 272, has many of the facts and figures about government receding after the war.

184 “the nation's credit base”: Hacker,
Triumph
, 361.

184 to the head of the class: In this latter part of the chapter I draw ­extensively on Walter Licht,
Industrializing America: The Nineteenth Century
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995). ­Licht's
Industrializing
, xiv, 102, 127, the Beards'
American Civilization, Vol. 2,
176, 206-­08, and Phillips's
Cousins
,
466-­69, describe the extent of the country's post-­war growth.

185 drew ­people to the land: Johnson's
Laws
, 94, 100-­02, reports the effects of the Homestead Act and the Land-­Grant College Act.

185 to conquer the continent: White's
Railroaded
is a contrarian take on the growth of the railroads but is extremely well-­informed. This passage draws on material from the first 60 pages or so. The Beards'
American Civilization, Vol. 2
, 136-­37, details the lavish government support, as does Hacker's
Triumph
, 371. Phillips's
Cousins
, 469, Bensel's
Yankee
, 252, 308, and Licht's
Industrializing
, 82, describe the growth of the network during the latter half of the century. White's
Railroaded
,
393, and Lind's
Promise
, 154, tell the tale of the bust later in the century. Finally, Lind's
Promise
, 153, Licht's
Industrializing
, 82, 152, McDougall's
Throes
, 555, and Gordon's
Empire
, 235-­36, report the economic benefits of the new railway network.

187 “the western front out on the Pacific”: Beard,
American Civilization, Vol. 2
, 135-­36.

187 A revolution swept: For many of the facts in this passage I turned to Licht's
Industrializing
chapter “The Rise of Big Business.” Bensel's
Yankee
, 249-­53, and Gordon's
Empire
, 232, cover the rise of American finance.

188 the new breed: Hacker's
Triumph
has a terrific treatment of Carnegie, 413-­24. I also draw on Gordon's
Empire
, 249, and Lind's
Promise
, 163.

189 outside the mainstream: My main source for the discussion of the travails of the post-­war South is Licht's
Industrializing
, 118-­23.

191 The top 1 percent: Licht's
Industrializing
discusses income distribution, 183-­85. Charles R. Morris's
The Dawn of Innovation: The First American Industrial Revolution
(New York: PublicAffairs, 2012) discusses mobility, 285.

191 “not consciously aware”: Hacker,
Triumph
, 339.

192 “prodigious industrial expansion”: Frayssé,
Land, and Labor
, 184
.

192 “the triumph of the northern bourgeoisie”: Howe,
Political Culture
,
297.

192 certainly thought and said so: David Herbert Donald, “Getting Right with Lincoln,”
The Atlantic
, 1956, http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/95nov/lincoln/lincrite.htm.

194 a natural enlistee to progressivism: Krannawitter's
Vindicating
debunks the progressive case for Lincoln, 294-­304.

C
HAPTER 6

199 Foreign visitors in: Morris's
Dawn
has a good rundown of these quotes, 159-­72.

200 Striving is desirable: Charles Murray,
In Pursuit: Of Happiness and Good Government
(San Francisco: ICS Press, 1994), 140-­243, and ­Arthur C. Brooks,
Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America and How We Can Get More of It
(New York: Basic Books, 2008), chapter seven.

201 the sunny uplands: James T. Patterson,
Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) has much of this data, 61-­77.

201 couldn't and didn't last: Luigi Zingales,
A Capitalism for the ­People: Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity
(New York: Basic Books, 2012), 110, makes this argument. Tyler Cowen,
The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-­Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better
(New York: Dutton, 2011), makes the case for the “low hanging” thesis in chapter one.

202 all advanced economies: Cowen,
Stagnation
, 64.

202 all has not been wrack and ruin: Scott Winship, “Making Sense of Inequality,”
National Review,
August 13, 2012.

203 trends in the middle and the bottom: Winship parses the data for male high-school graduates, “All Sorts.” Zingales's
Capitalism
, 110, and Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill's
Creating an Opportunity Society
(Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 2009), 35, note the growing income gap between high-school and college graduates.

203 most tendentious explanation: Winship's “All Sorts” notes the income trends hold in other advanced countries. Wehner and Beschel in
National Affairs
note the same, as well as our steeply progressive tax system.

203 attributed to globalization: Zingales's
Capitalism
, 23, observes the effects of globalization. So does Haskins and Sawhill's
Creating
, 33, pointing out that male college graduation rates have been stagnating.

204 as fluid as we think: Scott Winship, “Mobility Impaired.”

204 Out-­of-­wedlock childbearing: The
New York Times
reported on the new illegitimacy figures on February 17, 2012. The study
When Marriage Disappears
marshalls the evidence for the importance of marriage for the outcomes of children and demonstrates how old norms are increasingly the exclusive province of the college-­educated. Brink Lindsey's
Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter—and More Unequal
(Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2012)
,
chapter six, and Zingales's
Capitalism
, 163, note the divergent child-­rearing practices by class.

206 dropping out of the labor force: Charles Murray,
Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960–2010
(New York: Crown Forum, 2012), 170-­81, and Haskins and Sawhill's
Creating
, 43, discuss the decline of work among low-­skilled males.

206 The starkest indicator: “Differences in Life Expectancy Due to Race and Educational Differences Are Widening, and Many May Not Catch Up,”
Health Affairs
31:8 (August 2012), 1803-­13.

206 photograph of Lincoln in 1846: Baker, “ ‘
Not Much of Me.'
”

209 “the blue model”: Walter Russell Mead, “The Once and Future Liberalism,”
The American Interest
, March/April 2012.

211 “the banner State of the Union”: Burlingame,
A Life
, 95.

211 escalator of educational attainment: Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz,
The Race between Education and Technology
(Cambridge, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College, 2008), document the slow-down in economic progress in their book-­length study, 4-­8, 324-­26. Zingales's
Capitalism
, 143, and Cowen's
Stagnation
, chapter two, note the ineffectuality of the jump of education spending in recent decades. Finally, Lindsey's
Human
, chapter seven, recounts the inadequacies of the current model of college.