Professor, isn’t it also true that Lincoln wanted industry to be onshore so America would have both the money and the rails they were making? I have some kind of hazy remembrance of him making a much quoted statement to that effect.
Absolutely. Remember, Lincoln was a WHIG turned Republican, and the Whigs were in most ways Federalists. Indeed, I can’t find any real differences between the Whigs and the Federalists.
He favored tariffs, as did every single president up to Theodore Roosevelt, then Calvin Coolidge and Warren Harding.
“Free trade” is a totally new concept of the last 50 years that came about 100% because we ALONE had industrial power that had not been bombed or destroyed. In other words, ONLY the US had “free trade” from 1945-1960. Once Japan and Western Europe revived, free trade ended because they passed laws to exclude American goods.