Not so...
“James Monroe
In 1822, President James Monroe observed that “whatever may be the abstract doctrine in favor of unrestricted commerce,” the conditions necessary for its success—reciprocity and international peace—”has never occurred and can not be expected.” Monroe said, “strong reasons… impose on us the obligation to cherish and sustain our manufactures.”
Abraham Lincoln
President Abraham Lincoln declared, “Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.” Lincoln warned that “the abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government… must produce want and ruin among our people.”
Lincoln similarly said that, “if a duty amount to full protection be levied upon an article” that could be produced domestically, “at no distant day, in consequence of such duty,” the domestic article “will be sold to our people cheaper than before.”
Additionally, Lincoln argued that based on economies of scale, any temporary increase in costs resulting from a tariff would eventually decrease as the domestic manufacturer produced more.
Lincoln did not see a tariff as a tax on low-income Americans because it would only burden the consumer according to the amount the consumer consumed. By the tariff system, the whole revenue is paid by the consumers of foreign goods… the burthen of revenue falls almost entirely on the wealthy and luxurious few, while the substantial and laboring many who live at home, and upon home products, go entirely free.
Lincoln argued that a tariff system was less intrusive than domestic taxation: The tariff is the cheaper system, because the duties, being collected in large parcels at a few commercial points, will require comparatively few officers in their collection; while by the direct tax system, the land must be literally covered with assessors and collectors, going forth like swarms of Egyptian locusts, devouring every blade of grass and other green thing.[15]
William McKinley
President William McKinley stated the United States’ stance under the Republican Party as:
Under free trade the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man[16]. [It is said] that protection is immoral.... Why, if protection builds up and elevates 63,000,000 [the U.S. population] of people, the influence of those 63,000,000 of people elevates the rest of the world. We cannot take a step in the pathway of progress without benefiting mankind everywhere. Well, they say, ‘Buy where you can buy the cheapest’.... Of course, that applies to labor as to everything else. Let me give you a maxim that is a thousand times better than that, and it is the protection maxim: ‘Buy where you can pay the easiest.’ And that spot of earth is where labor wins its highest rewards.[17]
[Free trade] destroys the dignity and independence of American labor… It will take away from the people of this country who work for a living—and the majority of them live by the sweat of their faces—it will take from them heart and home and hope. It will be self-destruction.[18]<”
The US have never practiced Free Trade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariffs_in_United_States_history#Abraham_Lincoln
The philosophical pronouncements of Monroe, Lincoln, and McKinley do not preclude America’s prospering market economy in the 1800’s which was mostly free from government interference and in which the average American was better off than anyone anywhere else.
Government has always distrusted freedom because by definition freedom is the ABSENCE of government. People all over the world risk their lives and often die for freedom. Freedom is a God-given desire and right. Freedom is worth fighting and dying for. And freedom is what made America great.