Why We Need Abe Lincoln Now, Our Foremost Economic Architect

Few Americans realize that a great deal of our collective wealth — transcontinental infrastructure from national banks to railroads — emerged from a few laws signed into law by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

As we struggle to emerge from the dual crises of a global pandemic and economic recession, we need to embrace “Lincolnomics,” that is, building internal improvements that bolster economic progress for everyone. (I explore Lincoln’s marvelous, enduring vision in my new book).

As our only president to hold a patent, Lincoln was an inventor, urban planner, lawyer, and economic visionary. He was no less than our innovator in chief, seeking to solve problems of continental transportation and enhance commerce in a time in which the national government didn’t have much of an infrastructure plan. Honest Abe was also our foremost architect of economic opportunity.

Most of his landmark legislation, signed at the height of the Civil War, created world-changing laws establishing land-grant colleges, national banking, paper currency, homesteading and the transcontinental railroad. He not only wanted to connect a vast continent from ocean to ocean, he boldly embraced technologies like the telegraph.

Ironically, what propelled Lincoln into politics wasn’t solely a hatred of slavery, it was a need to build infrastructure. He wanted the State of Illinois (and later the nation) to finance canals and railroads across the Prairie State.

One of Lincoln’s first campaign planks in the 1830s as a state assemblyman was to build a canal from the capitol Springfield to the Illinois River to access the Mississippi River system. Although that canal was never funded, another one to the north that connected Lake Michigan to the Illinois was – the Illinois and Michigan Canal (completed in 1848) literally seeded the creation of the City of Chicago by connecting the Great Lakes to the Mississippi. Lincoln even planned a town along the Springfield canal (“Huron”), which, too, was never built, before moving on to become a lawyer.

Although two Mississippi River sojourns to New Orleans ignited Lincoln’s revulsion of slavery, his credo to build “internal improvements,” inspired by Sen. Henry Clay’s Whig “American System” of infrastructure, animated his one term in Congress. One of his boldest speeches called for the need for federally funded canals, ports and railroad grants. Up until the emergence of Clay and the Whig party, Democrat party presidents and politicians – dominated by Southern slave-holding landowners – proclaimed that internal improvements were “unconstitutional.” Such a dubious federal policy lasted well in the 20^th Century.

A deeper look into Lincoln’s connection between equality, innovation and public works was revealed in his obscure address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society and Discoveries and Inventions speeches, both delivered after the groundbreaking Lincoln-Douglas debates and just before his famous Cooper Union speech in 1860.

In the Wisconsin speech, Lincoln equates the concept of free labor, that is, the right to earn and keep decent pay for your work no matter who you are, with “the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all — gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all.” This is Lincoln’s economic ladder of progress, self-betterment and equality, which undergirds our free enterprise system and so much more.

Lincoln’s championing of everything from railroad and homestead land grants to public education changed America, leading to its massive growth and industrial prowess. But it wasn’t a complete doctrine. It was, and is today, unfinished business. Cross-country roads were miserable affairs well into the early 20^th Century — even the New York to San Francisco “Lincoln Highway,” initially funded by private donations, which were a pittance relative to what was needed to cross several vast mountain ranges, deserts, rivers and plains.

In lieu of a true federally funded Interstate Highway program, his namesake road was initially funded by private subscriptions, a model even Henry Ford said was grossly inadequate. Lincoln would’ve seen the need for more and given the national government to power to fund such essential improvements.

Today, as we rest precariously on the ambitious yet fractured legacy of Lincoln’s robust plan for national infrastructure, equality and economic progress, Lincolnomics needs to transcend his original vision.

We need a egalitarian national healthcare system that is not only able to deal with pandemics, but an aging population and the massive healthcare deserts in communities of color. Our physical infrastructure from our century-old electrical grid to decaying public transit systems is badly in need of updating in the age of climate change and renewable energy. We are so far behind on basic infrastructure repairs and updates that the American Society of Civil Engineers give the U.S. a “D+” grade on this subject. Trillions of dollars are needed, which Congress and the White House can’t advance to every congressional district soon enough.

Many of these issues are addressed in President Biden’s extensive plans to update infrastructure, address climate change and create jobs, but they are not enough. We need a sustainable way of funding these projects on an ongoing basis. Several affluent nations have created “sovereign wealth funds” to this end. A steady source of revenue from private and public sources is essential.

We have decades of work to do from updating water treatment plants to giving our educational institutions the funds they need to produce 21^st Century innovation, environmental solutions and social justice.

Clearly we need a spiritually economic plan that dreams big and attempts to heal the many deep wounds we’re experiencing. That means a bold, new suite of internal improvements that benefits every community — a move away from division and malice that Lincoln cited in his second inaugural address: “let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds.”