Why is there so much anti-Lincoln sentiment among some conservatives now? I think they're looking for a "point at which everything went wrong." Before one accepts the answer that Lincoln was to blame, on has to look at what the conflicts and alternatives at the time really were, and not simply project present political issues back upon the past. One also has to ask what would have happened if we'd taken an alternative path. We may have avoided some of the problems we face now, but have run into worse ones. Alternatively, the same scourges might have visited us, and only taken a different path to our door.
In MacKinlay Kantor's old classic "If the South Had Won the Civil War" that old centralizer Woodrow Wilson is elected President -- of the victorious CSA. I'm told that in Harry Turtledove's alternative histories, the war is refought two generations later with a bloody Verdun in Kentucky.
There would have been Confederate paths to statism, socialism, nationalism, militarism, and imperialism, as there were Union paths, and as there were such paths in the ante-bellum and post-bellum South. And one can't assume that a victorious Confederacy would not itself perish due to its own regional, racial and class conflicts.
Today, after the end of the Cold War, we are more suspicious of government. That is natural and good. The problem is that we presume that we would always have been at least as rich, free, proud, and safe as we are now, whatever happened. That is a mistaken assumption. Other paths, including some which might seem to some people to lead to greater liberty, might have yielded far worse consequences that what actually happened.
The tariff. Yes, Lincoln and the Republicans did stand for a high tariff in order to protect American workingmen and foster American manufacturing. This sounds today like bad economic policy, but Alexander Hamilton, who originally recommended it in the 1780s, knew his Adam Smith quite well and realized that all economics is political economy. In a world dominated by powerful monarchies, the success of America's republican experiment depended on achieving a certain measure of national power, including manufacturing capacity, quickly
Come on X. It's a stupid article. He doesn't even get his Hamilton right. Old Alexander wasn't concerned about foreign manufacturing. He favored a high tariff for internal improvements. Kessler is a hack. He's supposed to be an intellectual at a conservative free market think tank and he then tries to hee haw his way through a bunch of junk economics. Neo Cons..
One more time! Social Security, Medicare, and every big gubbermint boondogle is the direct result from the centralizers.. Hamilton, Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR and then LBJ...
LOL!! So that includes the raping of women, maidservants, theft of private property, random burning of houses, and generally killing anyone who stood in their way? What killing and raping innocent women prevented them from procreating more enemies? And don't bother asking where the info came from. It's documented in the Official Record as published by the north and sits in the Library of Congress.
That 4 years was when the country 'went wrong' as you say. After that there was no turning back and the concocted vote on the 14th Amendment along with the national government's first foray into public education shortly after pretty much closed the door on a federal republic