Too funny! Lincoln was the quintessential big-government insider. Don’t let that “log-splitter” swill fool you, because he had been an attorney for railroads, and played quite a role in setting the stage for getting tax-payer funded subsidies for railroad ventures. He was quite vocal in his argument that the federal government should reign supreme, and that the individual states should be relegated to subordinate vassal status, existing primarily to serve the interests of the federal government.
Total rubbish & nonsense.
Lincoln served one term in Congress, ending in 1849 after his opposition to Democrat President Polk's Mexican war had cost him much support in his Illinois district.
Between 1849 and the election year of 1860, Lincoln made no notable trips outside Illinois, until invited to speak at Cooper Union, New York, in February, 1860.
That speech to powerful Republican leaders won Lincoln much praise, but there is no evidence he had suddenly become beholden to "big government insiders".
In fact, before 1861, all those "big government insiders" were, as now, Democrats, who had ruled in Washington, DC, almost uninterrupted since the Founding.
Yes, Lincoln did support building the transcontinental railroad, which began while he was President and was completed in 1869.
But the Federal government didn't build it and didn't even pay for it, except through granting a strip of Federal lands to build it through.
That hardly qualifies as "big government."
Lincoln's administration in Washington was shaped by the needs of Civil War and is responsible for the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments, but at war's end Washington returned to basically the same government it had been in 1860 -- especially after the presidential election & compromise of 1876 which resulted in Union troops withdrawal from Confederate states and the return of white rule there.
So the era of "Big Bad Government" you decry really began with the Progressive years, especially under another Southern Democrat President, Woodrow Wilson.