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The Income Tax (1862) was a war measure. It wasn't intended to be permanent and, unlike many "temporary" measures in the 20th century, it was abolished after the war. A country at war needed to be able to raise money, and the existing forms of taxation didn't provide it. The US had also considered an income tax during the War of 1812, though it wasn't adopted, so it's not as though the idea was invented in the 1860s. If the income tax of Lincoln's era had lasted, I'd certainly hold it against him, but it didn't.

The banking measures were part of Lincoln's electoral program. But they weren't something that Washington, Hamilton, or Adams, Madison or Monroe would have objected to. Indeed, the early governments of the republic went much further and gave us two national banks, which Jefferson and Jackson had killed or let die.

For Lincoln and many others, Jackson's state banking era was a time of corrupt, fly-by-night banks and bank failures. I don't know who was right in that conflict, but Lincoln and others judged on the basis of what they'd seen growing up. Jackson's crushing of the bank was an example of presidential tyranny. In the eyes of Lincoln and others, Andrew Jackson was the usurper who recklessly and arbitrarily broke with the tradition of the founders, and national control of banking a conservative policy.

The currency measures might have been in accord with Lincoln's views on banking but were more a response to the monetary pressures of the war and the struggle with counterfeiters. It's nice to talk about private currency, but when you have thousands of different bank notes circulating in a country at war it's hard to know whose notes are valid.

I don't know why you object so much to improvements in postal service. It must be to pad out the list. Delivering the mails is an explicit power of the federal government. As time goes on, there will be changes in service. It wasn't a grab for power the first time mail was sent by train or truck or plane or the first time stamps were sold. It was a part of providing a continuing service the founders had mandated. Or do you believe that only part of the mail should be received by only part of the people part of the time.

The National Academy of Sciences was an independent advisory board that Congress could consult with on policy questions. It was fully in line with what George Washington, the Adamses and others had hoped for our country's capital. If you look back at the original by-laws, they were forbidden from taking federal money, so Congress's approving the charter was not in itself a grab for power by big goverment.

The Office of Immigration is something that only shows up on lists like yours. It's hard to believe that at some point before history, the government didn't keep track of who was entering our country. But today, after 9/11, doesn't that look like a legitmate function of government? Could we have 50 or 1000 or no agencies making sure that terrorists don't enter the country? If I'm not mistaken the country tried to do without some control over immigration after the war, but found it couldn't do without such control. Could we simply leave open the borders now?

The Morrill Tariff was certainly higher than it should have been. And the Agriculture Department would grow into a very large bureaucracy. Likewise, railroad grants did get out of hand. But were such things as the Homestead Act and Land Grant Colleges a bad thing? A market purist might argue that access to new lands and higher education ought to have been limited to the highest bidder. But providing alternative ways to such ends did a lot for the country and helped to relieve discontentment at the bottom of society.

Some of what you've come up with were temporary war measures. Other things were administrative improvements or the natural expansions of what government was doing any way. Some went beyond that, but were in the spirit of Washington and Adams. I don't think it adds up to a major power grab. When Polk printed postage stamps and created the Interior Department was that also an assault on liberty?

The pressures of war were indeed great. Jefferson Davis's Confederacy had an income tax and a tax in kind imposed on agricultural produce. Such a demand on the average farmer cut deeper than the North's taxes, but some people actually believe that the Confederacy had no income tax. Davis's Confederacy actually interfered more in industry and people's lives than the Union, but that's been forgotten by many.

Lincoln was a president in the Harding-Coolidge-Eisenhower tradition. If you look at the 1920s you could abstract out a list of government achievements -- dams and canals built, the beginnings of federal regulation of broadcasting and aviation, airmail, new programs in the Commerce and Agriculture Departments, nuclear power -- all designed to promote industry and economic expansion, and conclude that they were monstrous statists. Doubtless some anti-industrial agrarians, state's rights "Jeffersonians," anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, and "paleolibertarians" would think so, but in the American context -- and probably in the broader Western one as well -- Lincoln, Harding, and Coolidge counted as moderate conservatives. So did Eisenhower, who promoted nuclear energy, space exploration, interstate highways, the St. Lawrence Seaway, school desegregation, and higher education.

All four presidents were willing to use the federal government to promote commerce, but they had a greater interest in liberty than most other politicians in history did. I don't argue that all these policies were justified. Some of them were unnecessary or dangerous, but Lincoln, Harding, Coolidge, and Eisenhower weren't on the left, and they did leave much good behind. If anything, Lincoln was closer to Harding and Coolidge than to the more liberal Eisenhower. On the whole, such men were better for America than their Democrat opponents would have been, and better too than anti-government radicals would have been if such anarcho-libertarians had existed or had any following at the time.