Free Republic

It was Lincoln who said "Give me a general who will fight!" That was after the North was defeated over and over again by Robert E. Lee's smaller and more agile armies. Lincoln's first generals fought desperately hard, but not hard enough to win. In the upshot, the Civil War dragged out to became our bloodiest war ever, 600,000 dead -- mostly white folks. And yes, it was triggered by Christian Abolitionists who made slavery morally intolerable to half the nation. Lincoln was therefore forced to find generals who would fight, and he found Sherman and Grant, who wreaked terrible...

Weighing the economics of Abraham Lincoln isn’t easy to do in today’s terms. Lincoln was pro-subsidy and pro-tariff, both of which stances tend to be assigned to the interventionist left in today’s discussions. But Lincoln’s infrastructurally and financially primitive economy was not ours, and it’s worth thinking about how he might govern today given that in his words there is an unshakeable faith in free enterprise. Lincoln was pro-business, laudatory of wealth creation (and the inequality that goes with it), against class warfare and in favor of exploiting natural resources. “Property,” he said in 1864, “is the fruit of labor...