Lincoln Unbound (30 page)

212 Funding should follow: Frederick M. Hess, “Does School Choice ‘Work'?”
National Affairs 5
(Fall 2010), 35–53.

213 “forestalled social dynamism”: Guelzo,
Redeemer
, 9.

213 expanded inexorably: Nicholas Eberstadt,
A Nation of Takers: America's Entitlement Epidemic
(West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton Press, 2012). The information on food stamps is from one of my own columns, “The Rise of Food Stamp Nation,”
National Review Online
, July 10, 2012. Murray's
Coming Apart
, 170, and Lindsey's
Human,
chapter six, discuss the rise in usage of Social Security Disability Insurance.

214 advent of the welfare state: The pensions for widows and orphans of the Civil War dead and for disabled veterans are sometimes interpreted as a precursor to the welfare state. They indeed became incredibly expansive in the decades after the war. But they applied to a class of ­people who had served the country, and they faded out with the passing of the veterans and their families.

215 makes it impossible to build: White's
New Atlantis
essay addresses this point.

216 creating the Department of Agriculture: The language in the act creating the department can be found at the USDA National Agricultural Library, http://www.nal.usda.gov/lincolns-­agricultural-­legacy. A report by the non-­profit The American Association for the Advancement of Science notes the decline in research funding, http://www.aaas.org/spp/rd/fy2013/hist13pGDP.pdf.

217 “By increasing total wealth”: Howe,
Political Culture
, 9. Sellers's
Market Revolution
has the nineteenth century income-­distribution numbers. The labor quote is from Taylor's
Transportation
, 264.

217 the occasional Irish joke: The count is from P. M. Zall, ed.,
Abe Lincoln Laughing
(Knoxville, TN: The University of Tennessee Press, 1995), index. Burlingame's
A Life
, 413, Foner's
Fiery
, 78-­133, and Foner's
Free
, 198, 257-­59, are the sources of much of the information regarding the nativist and immigrant votes.

222 same odor of elitism: Howe's
Political Cultur
e, 37, has the Emerson put-­down. Haskins and Sawhill's
Creating
, 71, sets out the data on the effect of adherence to bourgeois norms. The Susan Mayer book is
What Money Can't Buy: Family Income and Children's Life Chances
, 2-­12. The alcohol numbers come from Sellers's
Market Revolution
, 259-­65. The Yuval Levin quote comes from his excellent review of Murray's
Coming Apart
in the
Weekly Standard
, March 19, 2012. Lindsey's
Human
, chapter seven, discusses prescriptive parole, and any number of papers by Robert Rector make the case for work requirements across welfare programs and for a campaign of public suasion on illegitimacy. Finally, Baker's “ ‘
Not Much of Me'
” notes the contrasting rustic and bourgeois cultures during Lincoln's day.

225 A vast apparatus of cultural uplift: Warren's
Youth
, 79, 106, 167, ­describes Lincoln's readers and quotes from them extensively. The dyspeptic quote is from Sellers's
Market Revolution
, 365.

227 bordered on the worshipful: I'm indebted here to the wonderful discussion of Lincoln and the Founders in Allen C. Guelzo's
Abraham Lincoln: As a Man of Ideas
(Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), chapter six.

232 last spasm of the Civil War: I previously published this paragraph making this argument about the Civil Rights Act elsewhere. Gerard Alexander, “The Myth of the Racist Republicans,”
Claremont Review of Books
, IV:2 (Spring 2004)
.

 

Index

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Abe Lincoln Laughing
(Zall), 217

Abraham Lincoln: A Life
(Burlingame), 19n

“Abraham Lincoln and the Self-­Made Myth” (Hofstadter), 14

Academically Adrift
(Arum and Roksa), 212

Adams, Charles Francis, 8

Adams, John, 20

Adams, John Quincy, 60, 61, 85

agriculture, 21; Department of Agriculture, 216; Homestead Act, 177–79; Lincoln and, 91–92, 193; specialization, 45, 119–20, 121; subsistence farming, 21, 45, 119

Alexander, Gerard, 232–33

Alger, Horatio, 7

American Dream, 5, 16, 129, 198, 205–6, 240

Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President
(Guelzo), 12n

American North: banking/currency reform, 174–75; as capitalist republic, 145, 168; Civil War and prosperity, 181–82; economic rise of, 120–21; immigration and, 168–69; industrialization, 168, 171–72; as laissez-­faire haven, 179; manufacturing in, 171; population of, 168–69; railroads in, 171; slaves in, 136; strength in 1864, 167–68; wage labor in, 146–47

American Revolution, 73

American South: caste system, 5; Civil Rights Act and, 232; Confederacy income tax, 12, 180; Confederate Army, 181; cotton crop, 136, 170–71, 190; Declaration and, 11, 140–41; decline of New Orleans, 118–19; economic effect of war, 181, 189–90; economy of, 149–50; expansionist goals, 137, 159–60, 170; fear of free states, 169; federalism in, 11; filibustering, 137; homestead bills opposed, 178; industrialization, 169–70, 190–91; inflation, 180–81; manufacturing, 171; on Northern capitalism, 146; political power, 136, 182; population, 168–69; post-­bellum decline, 189–90; racial oppression in, 190; reconstruction, 183, 190; rejoining mainstream, 201; romantic image, 148–49; secession, 5, 11, 170, 181, 198, 228, 237; sharecropping, 190; slavery, 5, 11, 136–37, 145, 147–51, 158–59, 169, 182; Southern Democrats, 11; Tariff of Abominations, 106–7; transportation in, 150, 181; war socialism, 179–81

Armstrong, John, 126

Arnavon, Cyrille, 192

Arum, Richard, 212

Baker, Jean, 30, 206, 225

banking, 15, 59, 105; Bank of the United States, 61–62, 91, 105; Bank War, 103, 105; Jacksonian opposition, 60–61, 87–88, 105, 175; Legal Tender Act and, 174–75; Lincoln and, 103–6, 114, 174–75, 193; national banks, 175, 187–88; Whig party support, 61–62, 91

Basler, Roy P., 2n

Beard, Charles and Mary, 187

Bell, Alexander Graham, 191

Bensel, Richard Franklin, 174, 179, 180, 187

Benton, Thomas Hart, 114

Biddle, Nicholas, 62

Birch, Jonathan, 152, 153

Black Hawk War, 3, 46, 70

Blackstone, Sir William, 51, 75

Bliss, J. S., 236–37

Bloomberg, Michael, 222

Boritt, Gabor, 90, 91, 103, 121

Breckinridge, John, 170

Breese, Sidney, 110

“Broadway Pageant, A” (Whitman), 167

Brockman, John, 75

Brooks, Arthur, 200

Brownson, Orestes, 146

Bryan, William Jennings, 193–94

Buchanan, James, 178

Buckley, William F., Jr., 239

Burlingame, Michael, 19n, 40, 78

Bush, George W., 209

Bushnell, Horace, 95

Butler, William, 48, 78

Calhoun, John C., 53, 54, 140

Campbell, James, 176

Canisius, Theodore, 219

capitalism, American, 87–123; Declaration as foundation, 143; industrial capitalism, 191–92; infrastructure and, 96; labor theory of value, 90–91; Lincoln and, 103–7, 111–13, 145, 148, 168, 198; in the North, 145, 168; as opportunity, 114–16; post-­bellum America and, 185–87, 191–92; railroads and, 119; South and, 146–47, 168; Wayland's ideas, 90–91; Whig party and, 90–92, 114–15

Carey, Henry Charles, 90, 91

Carnegie, Andrew, 15, 188–89

Chapman, A. H., 29, 37

Chase, Salmon P., 168, 174

Chicago, Illinois, 120, 135, 185

Churchill, Winston, 228

cities, 21, 118–19, 120, 185

Civil Rights Act, 232

Civil War: Anaconda Plan, 168; bond drives, 188; casualties, 181; Confederate Army, 181; federal spending, 184; industrialized North triumphs over agrarian South, 168; Lincoln on purpose of, 2; Lincoln's address to 166th Ohio Regiment, 1–3; Northern prosperity and, 181–82; Southern economic-­political power and, 179–81, 182; tariffs levied for, 176; tax levied for, 11–12, 176

Clay, Clement Claiborne, Jr., 177

Clay, Henry, 56–64, 80, 85, 134, 142, 154, 238; “American System” of, 58–59; Hamiltonian economics of, 59; Lincoln's eulogy, 86, 141; re-­chartering Bank of the United States, 61–62; “self-­made man” coined, 57

Clinton, DeWitt, 98

Cobb, Williamson R. W., 177

Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln
(Basler ed.), 2n

Colton, Calvin, 114–15

Commentaries on the Laws of England
(Blackstone), 51, 75

Cooke, Jay, 188

Cooper, Thomas, 95

Cowen, Tyler, 202

Crawford, Elizabeth, 25

Crawford, Josiah, 34

Cuomo, Mario, 9, 13, 207

currency, 61–62, 87, 91, 103–5; “greenbacks,” 174; Legal Tender Act and, 174–75; Lincoln and national bank, 105–6

Davis, David, 32, 53, 77–78, 97, 109

Davis, Rodney O., 23n

De Bow, James, 146, 150

DeBow's Review
, 118–19

Declaration of Independence, 5, 7, 16; Lincoln and, 128, 129, 140–45, 156, 164, 228; natural rights and, 143–45, 161; “self-­evident lie,” 140–41

Democracy in America
(Tocqueville), 197

Democratic Party: banking and, 61–62, 87–88, 175; basic tenets, 230–31; “Cross of Gold” speech, 194; as Democratic Republicans, 60; government action vs. self-­reliance, 230; hard-­money gospel of, 105; in Illinois, 53, 101; Jacksonians in, 61, 105, 121, 146; “negative liberal state” of, 58.
See also
Jackson, Andrew

Dickey, T. Lyle, 127–28

DiLorenzo, Thomas, 10–11

Dirck, Brian, 50

Dodge, William E., 171

Donald, David Herbert, 8, 26, 78

Douglas, Stephen, 42, 82, 129–30, 132–33, 152, 192, 229; Kansas-­Nebraska Act, 133–35; Lincoln debates, 57, 125–40, 151–64; as Lincoln rival, 114, 123, 126, 127, 130–33; railroads and, 128–29, 134; slavery and, 133–35, 151–64, 237; wife Adele, 152

Douglass, Frederick, 161

Duncan, Joseph, 100

Eberstadt, Nicholas, 213

economy, 194; banking-­currency and, 104, 174–75; barter economy, 29, 38; cash economy, 29, 76, 103; democratic capitalism and, 5, 168; federal spending, Civil War and post-­war, 184; financiers, debt financing, and Robber Barons, 187–89; free trade and, 176; global, U.S. share, 209; globalization, 203–4; government debt, 184; housing bubble, 209; industrialization and, 15–16, 21, 107, 120, 121, 149, 168, 171–72, 193; labor market, 204; Lincoln and a robust market, 14; Lincoln and industrialization, 4, 7, 15–16, 107, 120, 121, 149, 168; as Lincolnian republic and, 199–207; of Lincoln's boyhood, 20–21, 29; Lincoln's formula for today's economic ills, 207; Lincoln's modernization of, 5, 168; Lincoln's vision, 89, 107, 116–17, 129, 165, 172, 183–84, 193; post-­Civil War, 185–87 191; post-­World War II, 201–2; protective tariffs and, 193; private sector and, 209–10; revolution in business, 187–89; slowing growth of, 202–3, 209; Southern cotton sales, 170–71; technology and, 202, 204, 208, 210; unemployment and, 206; U.S. vs. Western Europe, 204; World War II and, 194–95

Edison, Thomas, 191

education: American Dream and, 205–6; class divide in America and, 207; costs, 211, 212; emphasizing today, 210–12; G.I. Bill and, 201; land-­grant colleges, 176–77, 185; Lincoln policies, 44, 45, 210–11; moral, 225–26; North vs. South, 150; opportunity and, 210–11; reforms proposed, 211–12; rural America, 31–32 ; socio-­cultural effects, 205, 206; U.S. advantage in, 202; U.S. slippage, 211, 227

Edwards, Elizabeth (sister-­in-­law), 77, 79, 80

Edwards, Matilda, 130

Edwards, Ninian (brother-­in-­law), 80, 113–14, 130

Eisenhower, Dwight, 232

Elements of Political Economy, T
he
(Wayland), 90

Elmore, Johnson, 42

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 4, 8

English Grammar
(Kirkham), 49

English Reader
(Murray), 34, 226

Erie Canal, 98, 99

Faust, Drew Gilpin, 3

Federalist Papers, 95–96

Fehrenbacher, Don, 126, 153

Fillmore, Millard, 219

Fisk, John Moore, 53

Fitzhugh. George, 140, 146, 208

Fogel, Robert, 149

Foner, Eric, 120, 158

Ford, Thomas, 101, 106

Forquer, George, 55

Founding Fathers, 8, 16, 141, 142, 155–58; Lincoln reverence for, 227–29

Francis, Simeon, 82

Franklin, Benjamin, 195

Garrison, William Lloyd, 228

Gentry, James, 38–39

Gentry, Joseph, 25

Gettysburg Address, 2, 7

Gillespie, Joseph, 78, 84, 88, 89, 131–32, 142, 151

globalization, 203–4

Godbey, Russell, 51–52

Goldwater, Barry, 231–33

Goodrich, Grant, 93–94

Grant, Ulysses S., 186

Great Stagnation, The
(Cowen), 202

Greeley, Horace, 177, 179

Green, Bowling, 50–51

Greene, William, 49–50, 70

Grigsby, Nathaniel, 70–71

Guelzo, Allen, 12, 12n, 153, 229

Hacker, Louis, 184, 189, 192

Hamilton, Alexander, 61, 95–96, 116, 168

Hammond, James, 145, 147, 170

Hanks, Dennis (cousin), 27, 29, 30, 34, 35–36, 38, 206–7

Hanks, John (cousin), 33, 40, 41, 206–7

Hardin, John, 71

Harmony of Interests, The
(Carey), 91

Harrison, William, 80, 85–86

Hartz, Louis, 116

Haskins, Ron, 223

Hay, John Milton, 78, 121

Hay, Milton, 121

Hazel, Caleb, 31

Herndon, J. Rowan, 56–57

Herndon, William “Billy,” 22, 57, 23n, 78, 164; on Douglas, 131; interviews on Lincoln, 22, 23–24, 25, 29, 30, 31, 35–36, 39, 40, 51, 53, 54–55, 63, 69, 70, 71, 78, 80, 84, 93–94, 114, 127–28, 130, 142, 151, 184; letter from Mary Owen, 79; letter from Wentworth, 133; Lincoln and
Elements
, 90; Lincoln and law, 50; Lincoln and railroads, 111–13; Lincoln as politician, 80; Lincoln letter to, 75–76; Lincoln's mother, 28; Lincoln's ambition, 22, 23, 80; Lincoln's debt, 46; Lincoln's 1839 debate loss, 131–32; Lincoln's love of politics, 80; Lincoln's office, 108; Lincoln's presidential aims, 86; Lincoln's remoteness, 77; Lincoln's “skinning of Thomas,” 82; Lincoln's thinking, 93; on the System, 99

Herndon's Informants
(Wilson and Davis, eds.), 23n

Hofstadter, Richard, 14

Holt, Michael, 59, 62

Homestead Act, 12, 177–79, 185

Howe, Daniel Walker, 56, 56n, 58, 74, 94, 192, 217

Illinois, 21; 1840 Bank crisis, 87–88; banning of blacks in, 162–63; corn and wheat exports, 120; Democrats, 53, 87–88, 101, 103; elections as events, 80–81; industrialization of, 120; Lincoln and the System, 95–102, 110; Lincoln and the Long Nine, 99–100; Lincoln as representative, 48; Lincoln family moves to, 39–40; Lincoln's economic vision manifested in, 116–17, 120–21; manufacturing in, 121; party switchers in, 54; population growth, 120; railroads, 99, 110, 117, 134; Republican Party, 125–26; state bank created, 103, 106; state capital, 48, 100; Whigs in, 54–55, 88

Illinois Central Railroad, 110–13, 128

immigration, 168–69, 217–18, 221–22

Indiana, 21; banning of blacks in, 162; Lincoln attends school in, 32; Lincoln family in, 19, 23, 22–24, 27–28, 31; Lincoln return to (1859), 121–22; newspapers in, 34; property rights in, 95

In Pursuit
(Murray), 200

Internet, 208

Jackson, Andrew, 54, 59–63, 96, 106, 142, 154, 235; Douglas as supporter of, 129–30

Jaffa, Harry, 73

Jefferson, Thomas, 20, 35, 57, 96, 142, 156, 158, 168

Johnson, Andrew, 177–78

Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 11, 12

Johnston, John (stepbrother), 69, 76–77

Junius Tracts
(Colton), 114–15

Kelley, Robert, 67

Kendall, Willmoore, 10

Kentucky: banning of blacks in, 162; Clay and, 57; Lincoln attends school in, 31; Lincoln family in, 19, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28–29; property rights in, 94–95; as slave state, 137–38

Kentucky Preceptor, The
, 226

Kerry, John, 9

Kirkham, Samuel, 49

Kleiman, Mark, 224–25

Know-­Nothings, 135, 218, 219

Lamborn, Josiah, 55

law: bankruptcy law, 61;
Commentaries
, 51, 75; land law, 94–95; Lincoln circuit riding, 109–10; Lincoln letters on, 74–75; Lincoln's belief in rule of, 72–73; Lincoln's cases, 52, 108–15; Lincoln's earnings, 110, 111; Lincoln's office, 108; Lincoln's study of, 50–52; patent law, 93–94; upward mobility and, 50.
See also
property rights

Lehrman, Lewis, 140

Lessons in Elocution
, 34, 225–26

Levin, Yuval, 224

Levine, Bruce, 21, 45, 120

liberalism/progressivism, 12, 58, 231; claiming Lincoln, 9, 194, 229–30

Libertarians, 10–11, 233

Licht, Walter, 187, 190, 191

Life of Washington
(Weems), 165

Lincoln, Abraham, 19n, 108; ambition of, 8, 22–23, 25, 30–31, 50, 52, 55, 67, 122, 240; animals, kindness to, 70–72; appearance, 42, 43, 46, 47, 78–79, 83, 114, 152, 206–7; aspiration and, 115; character and personality, 2, 23–24, 35, 42–43, 69, 71, 77–78, 109, 122, 131–32; courtship of Mary Owen, 79; Declaration and, 5, 7, 16, 128, 129, 140–45, 156, 164, 228; deification of, 197; enduring relevance of, 240; the Founding and, 8, 16, 141, 194, 228; “getting right with Lincoln,” 8–9, 229; individualism and, 13, 14; as inventor, 93; Irish jokes, 217–18, 219; judgment of human nature, 236–37; marriage to Mary Todd, 78–79; middle-­class values, 4–5, 30, 67–70, 214–15; as non-­drinker, 67–68, 73–74, 81; as non-­smoker, 68; “optimism of Western Civilization” and, 90; principles of, 53–54, 67–73, 115–16, 163–64; “race of life,” 199; rhetorical style, wit, verbal acuity, 33, 42, 48, 55–56, 82–83, 84–85, 153, 236; strength of, 20, 38, 42, 69–70, 81; talents and intelligence, 23–25, 35, 84–85; voice, 154; work ethic, 4–5, 18, 20, 33, 74, 75, 76–77, 200, 214–15