A Just and Generous Nation

by Harold Holzer

  Abraham Lincoln was a philosophic thinker, a brilliant orator, and a pragmatic politician. Ideological perfection is a rarity among pragmatic politicians. The ability to accomplish great things has become the touchstone of our admiration for our most respected US presidents and other world leaders. The more we learn about great political leaders, the more we respect them as pragmatic politicians. But Lincoln was more than a pragmatist. Not only did he succeed in building the reality of a government “for the people,” he also promoted ideas about the American Dream that the nation could support. That combination is the basis for our continuing admiration for his unique legacy.

  Lincoln understood that the future of American democracy depends above all on a thriving middle class—a belief we are at risk of losing today when the middle class is faced with little government support. Lincoln understood that the nation needs a strong middle class for both economic and political success.

  The presidency takes its toll: in less than five years, Lincoln seems to age a lifetime. At left, the newly minted presidential candidate in Springfield, Illinois, on May 20, 1860 (photograph by William Marsh); at right, the exhausted president in Washington on February 5, 1865, a few days after House passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Photograph by Alexander Gardner.

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  From the standpoint of politics, the existence of a large and vibrant middle class is crucial to stability. The middle class acts as a buffer, softening the age-old struggle between the “haves” and the “have-nots.” It is through the middle-class “dream” that Americans come to share common aspirations—aspirations that help to mute the differences in wealth, culture, race, and ethnicity that might otherwise threaten to tear our democracy apart. To survive as a democratic society, America must be a community bound by shared values.

  From the standpoint of economics, middle-class and working-class spending remains the primary engine of economic activity and growth in the United States. American consumer spending accounts for 65–72 percent of American gross domestic product. Sustaining the incomes—and therefore the spending—of all Americans is essential to sustaining the growth of the economy as a whole. It is the key to the “virtuous economic cycle,” and as the recent past has made all too clear, sustaining the incomes of the wealthiest Americans alone is not a viable substitute.

  Lincoln understood that the public needs to believe that America operates on the moral principle of fairness. Americans must view their government as pursuing policies that are fair to all citizens, and not hopelessly skewed to those who, by dint of their wealth, can command greatest control over government policy and the distribution of society’s resources. If, under the influence of Gospel of Wealth supply-side economic policies, income inequality continues to grow, and America evolves from a middle-class society into an asymmetrical “hourglass economy”—with a few at the top, many at the bottom, and ever fewer in the middle—it will be increasingly difficult to sustain the belief that Americans share a common destiny. The belief in fairness will wither and, with it, that crucial sense of democratic community.

  The challenges Lincoln faced were in many respects very different from the issues that perplex us today. He faced disunity and rebellion. We are dealing with economic inequality and substantial poverty. But Lincoln, as our most clear-eyed president, was the first to fully understand what America is all about and to tell us so in unfailingly clear terms how to use positive government action to build and maintain a successful middle-class society.

  Lincoln’s genius lay in his ability to see the relationship between the workaday economic realities of American life and the nation’s highest moral and political principles. In Lincoln’s mind, the opportunity “to improve one’s condition” was an essential feature of the Declaration of Independence’s assertion that human beings have unalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” More than any other president, Lincoln is the father of the dream that all Americans should have the opportunity through hard work to build a comfortable middle-class life. To Lincoln, the economic, moral, and political elements were inextricably intertwined. Together, they represented what is distinctively American about our economy and democracy.

  While these lessons seem clear, they are being obscured today by the ideological debates raging in Washington. There is much confusion in current political discourse over national economic policies. The most contentious arguments center on the relevance and meaning of government “for the people.”

  One group of citizens believes that government is inherently “inefficient”—that government should be increasingly limited and should do less and less. They argue that individuals and corporations should be left alone to make as much money as they can and pay less and less in taxes, because national economic growth depends on their productive talents. This set of beliefs provides an ideological and political underpinning for a conservative movement supported by a majority of wealthy Americans that gains additional support from people of modest means who are attracted to a set of beliefs that they equate with liberty and freedom.

  A second group, which notably includes Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Michael Bloomberg, three of America’s wealthiest billionaires, believes they should use both their money and their talents to improve the lives of the underadvantaged, poorest, and sickest people in the nation and the world. This is the modern version of what was called, in nineteenth-century France and England, noblesse oblige—the idea that with great wealth goes great responsibilities.

  A third group, generally called progressives, is favorably predisposed to the concept of positive government action for the people. While the progressives generally accept the validity of the claim that government is sometimes inefficient, they believe that only government can perform the essential functions of a truly democratic society.

  The ideological debates are further confused by an ongoing argument over the meaning of equality of opportunity. Some Americans believe that we need a positive government to ensure that all Americans have an equal chance to succeed in life. This belief supports government efforts to provide underadvantaged families with educational, vocational, and financial support to increase their opportunity to be successful participants in the American economic system. Others believe that a free and open society, by definition, provides equality of opportunity. Government action is unnecessary, in their view. Indeed, they believe it is typically counterproductive.

  The majority of Americans have little interest in ideological arguments. It is becoming clear that the ongoing contentious debates provide little in the way of conclusive political guidance to the citizens and the leaders of the nation. But one thing is certain—a weak American economy undermines Lincoln’s commitment to successful government action “for the people.” The evidence is mounting that a strong American economy can be sustained only by positive government policies that support increasing the income and consumer demand of American consumers who account for close to 70 percent of American GDP.

  Fortunately, we have a well-defined history of preserving economic opportunity in this country—a history that was established by Lincoln and later brought to our modern society by Franklin Roosevelt. Lincoln and Roosevelt used the resources of the federal government to give reality to the idea of America as an enduring middle-class society. Modern Americans can be grateful for the legacy of Lincoln, Roosevelt, and their positive government successors. We need only chart a path forward using these two leaders as guides. Lincoln’s vision of a middle-class society and Roosevelt’s positive government economic programs provided the basis for our prosperity in the decades immediately after World War II. They can provide the basis for our prosperity in the twenty-first century.

  Those who wish to turn the clock back to a time “before the New Deal” often forget that the same forces that produced the prosperity of the Roaring Twenties also triggered the economic catastrophes of 1929 and 2007. We must not forget that economic policies that
maximize business and consumer risk-taking may for a time encourage high rates of growth, but they also incur a much greater chance of economic disaster. The two go hand in hand. This is the primary economic lesson of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the more recent Great Recession starting in 2007.

  The battle is not over. Two opposing ideas of American society still compete vigorously today for the support of American citizens. On the one side is the American Dream of a successful middle-class society, inspired by Lincoln and carried forward by Presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and more recently William Jefferson Clinton and Barack Obama. On the other is the Gospel of Wealth supply-side economic idea, developed in the second half of the nineteenth century and carried forward by Presidents Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, and more recently Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. The success of one or the other of these conflicting ideas will continue to have major economic, moral, and political consequences for the future of American democracy.

  The task of rebuilding A Just and Generous Nation will not be easy. In twenty-first-century America, money is a major influence in national, state, and local politics. Politicians of both parties typically spend more time raising money for their political campaigns than working on legislation or governing. Lobbyists for business and other special interests have easy access to, increasing face time with, and substantial ongoing influence over candidates and elected officials both during and after elections.

  What seems clear is that fulfilling Lincoln’s vision of a successful middle-class society is a continuing work in progress. The nation’s political and economic future will increasingly depend on the ability of contemporary political figures to sustain positive public sentiment to support positive government action “for the people.” Political leaders seeking to serve the common good can restore the positive path of American history by embracing the Lincoln tradition of using government effectively to address the challenges our society faces.

  Americans need to come together to renew our nation’s commitment to Lincoln’s “unfinished work” to ensure that “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

  Appendix

  Acknowledgments

  Shivaun McDonagh deserves our gratitude for her unremitting and extraordinary contribution to the editorial and organizational integrity of this book. We also thank Kraig Smith for his great help throughout the publication process.

  We are grateful to our agent Frederica Friedman, a consummate publishing professional who worked timelessly on behalf of this work.

  We wish to thank Lara Heimert and her excellent editorial and production team at Basic Books for their superb job in presenting the story of this book to interested readers.

  Last but not least, for their advice and inspiration, we salute our accomplished, wonderful wives—to whom this book is dedicated.

  Notes

  Notes to Introduction

  2 “proposed to give” and allow “the weak to grow”: Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), hereafter cited as CW, Fragment on Slavery, 2:222.

  3 the uniquely American “right to rise”: Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis, TN: Memphis State University Press, 1978), 1.

  3 “Whatever is calculated to advance the condition”: Speech to Germans at Cincinnati, Ohio, February 12, 1861, CW, 4:203.

  4 “a fair chance, in the race of life”: Message to Special Session of Congress, July 4, 1861, CW, 4:438.

  4 Lincoln believed the unique purpose: Fragment on the Constitution and the Union, ca. January 1863, CW, 4:168–169.

  4 He called it the “laudable pursuit”: Message to Special Session of Congress, July 4, 1861, CW, 4:438.

  6 “The prudent, penniless beginner”: Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861, CW, 5:52.

  Notes to Chapter One

  11 frequently attributed to the nineteenth-century French writer: Robert Hendrickson, The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins (New York: Checkmark, 2000), 22. In reality, the phrase was first popularized a full century after Tocqueville by historian James Truslow Adams, in a best-selling book called The Epic of America (1932).

  11 “Amongst the novel objects”: Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America (originally published 1835–1839), translated by Henry Reeve, revised by Frances Bowen, edited by Phillip Bradley, 2 vols. (New York: Vintage, 1945), 1:3.

  12 Tocqueville witnessed a land alive: Ibid., 2:165–166.

  12 the country was ideally suited: Ibid., 1:53.

  12 struck by the level of social mobility: Ibid., 2:36–37.

  12 “I never met in America”: Ibid., 2:137–138.

  12 “Between these two extremes”: Ibid., 2:266.

  12 born . . . to parents from “undistinguished families”: Jesse Fell autobiography, December 20, 1859, Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), hereafter cited as CW, 3:511.

  13 “picked up from time to time”: Ibid.

  14 Neighbors whispered that he became sterile: See Charles Friend (a relative) to William H. Herndon (Lincoln’s law partner and future biographer), July 31, 1889, Douglas L. Wilson and Rodney O. Davis, Herndon’s Informants: Letters, Interviews, and Statements About Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 674.

  15 “It is a great folly”: John L. Scripps’s recollection in ibid., 57.

  16 “gratitude to our fathers”: Address to the Springfield Young Men’s Lyceum, January 27, 1838, CW, 1:108.

  16 “toil up from poverty”: From Lincoln’s Annual Message to Congress, December 3, 1861, CW, 5:52–53.

  17 may have converted Abe: Michael Burlingame, The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994), esp. 20–56.

  17 “wild animals still in the woods”: Autobiographical sketch, December 20, 1859, CW, 3:511.

  17 “One night,” he later reported: Scripps autobiography, CW, 4:62.

  18 “A gentleman had purchased”: Lincoln to Mary Speed, CW, 1:260.

  18 “toiling under the weight of poverty”: Chicago Tribune, November 27, 1860.

  19 “bunglingly sign his own name”: Autobiography written for John L. Scripps, ca. June 1860, CW, 4:61.

  20 The enterprise eventually “winked out”: Scripps autobiography, CW, 4:65.

  20 he began jokingly referring to his obligations: John T. Morse, Abraham Lincoln, 2 vols. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896), 1:40.

  21 he had not “since had any success”: Scripps autobiography, CW, 4:64.

  22 Lawyer Lincoln routinely handled: Two of the best new books on the subject are Allen D. Spiegel, A. Lincoln, Esquire: A Shrewd, Sophisticated Lawyer in His Time (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2002); and Mark E. Steiner, An Honest Calling: The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2006). The standard documentary reference work now is Daniel W. Stowell et al., eds., The Papers of Abraham Lincoln: Legal Documents and Cases, 4 vols. (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2008).

  24 “[W]e hope the author of it”: Scientific American, December 1, 1860, 356.

  24 Clay’s American System featured: Robert V. Remini, Henry Clay: Statesman for the Union (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 210–233.

  24 “My politics are short and sweet”: Gabor S. Boritt, Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream (Memphis, TN: Memphis State University Press, 1978), 93.

  25 As Lincoln surely knew: Ibid., 2.

  26 As Lincoln saw matters, “The true rule”: Speech to House of Representatives, June 20, 1848, CW, 1:484.

  30 “Mr. Clay’s predominant sentiment”: Eulogy to Henry Clay, July 6, 1852, CW, 2:126.

  Notes to Chapter Two

  35 Lincoln was “full of wit, facts, dates”: Harold Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper U
nion: The Speech That Made Abraham Lincoln President (New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks, 2004), 5.

  35 “The whole nation is interested”: Roy P. Basler, ed., The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1953–1955), hereafter cited as CW, 2:268.

  36 “When southern people tell us”: Lincoln’s Peoria, Illinois, speech, October 16, 1854, CW, 2:255–256.

  36 “Let it not be said”: CW, 266.

  37 his way to achieve the ultimate goal: A groundbreaking exploration of this theory can be found in James Oakes, The Scorpion’s Sting: Antislavery and the Coming of the Civil War (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014).

  37 Lincoln decried “the spread of slavery”: CW, 3:14.

  38 “Under the operation of the policy of compromise”: CW, 2:461–462. Lincoln took the “house divided” language from the Bible, Mark 3:25: “And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.”

  39 “Have we no tendency to the latter condition?”: CW, 2:514.

  40 “greedy chase to make profit of the negro”: CW, 2:276.

  41 He reiterated this position: CW, 3:249.

  41 “But in the right to eat the bread”: CW, 3:16.

  42 who foresaw “an ‘irrepressible conflict’”: CW, 4:451.

  42 he described them as equally guilty: Holzer, Lincoln at Cooper Union, 36–37.

  42 “Did you ever hear a Republican that dissented”: Justin G. Turner and Linda Levitt Turner, eds., Mary Todd Lincoln: Her Life and Letters (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972), 59; “Speech of Senator Douglas at Cincinnati,” New York Times, September 12, 1859.

  42 “We want, and must have, a national policy”: CW, 3:435.

  43 Ohio had gone Republican in 1859: Illinois State Journal, November 18, 1859.

  44 “I love Mr. Lincoln dearly”: William Herndon to Edward McPherson, clerk of the US House of Representatives, February 4, 1866.