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Struggling to Realize a Vast Future: The Civil War as a Contest over the Relative Priorities of Political Liberty and Economic Prosperity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2017

Adrian Brettle
Adrian Brettle*
Affiliation:
Rowan University
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Journal of Policy History , Volume 29 , Special Issue 2: Is Political Liberty Necessary for Economic Freedom? , April 2017 , pp. 267 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

I would like to thank Dr. Christopher Payne for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this article. I would also like to thank Professor Donald Critchlow and the other participants at the symposium “Is Political Liberty Necessary for Economic Prosperity?” Arizona State University, November 7–8, 2014, for their ideas and support.

References

NOTES

1. On the different meanings of liberty, see Skinner, Quentin, Liberty before Liberalism (New York, 1998);Google Scholar Constant, Benjamin, “The Spirit of Conquest” (1813), in Political Writings, ed. Fortana, Biancamaria (New York, 1988), 51–81;Google Scholar John Stuart Mill, “Civilisation” (1836), in Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. John Robson, 33 vols. (London, 1963–91), 18:117–47; and “Introduction” (1859), in On Liberty and Other Writings, ed. Stefan Collini (New York, 1989).

2. On the background of Lincoln and Davis, see Carwardine, Richard, Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power (New York, 2003);Google Scholar and Cooper, William J., Jefferson Davis: American (New York, 2001).Google Scholar On antebellum and wartime political economy, see Onuf, Nicholas and Onuf, Peter, Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War (Charlottesville, 2006), 278–341;Google Scholar and John, Richard R., Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America (University Park, Pa., 2006).Google Scholar On Union economic policy in the Civil War, see Cox Richardson, Heather, The Greatest Nation of the Earth: Republican Economic Policies during the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass., 1997).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Confederate economic policy, see John Majewski, Modernizing a Slave Economy: The Economic Vision of the Confederate Nation (Chapel Hill, 2009). On background to Lincoln’s political economy, see also Daniel Walker Howe, The Political Culture of the American Whig Party (Chicago, 1979), 182, 264, 269–70; Michael F. Holt, The Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party: Jacksonian Politics and the Onset of the Civil War (New York, 1999), 19–32, 89–121; Foner, Eric, Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War (New York, 1970)Google Scholar; and Amy Greenberg, A Wicked War: Polk, Clay, Lincoln, and the 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico (New York, 2012), 4, 25, 118, 270. On the background to Davis’s political economy, see also Harry L. Watson, Liberty and Power: The Politics of Jacksonian America (New York, 2006); Charles Sellers, The Market Revolution: Jacksonian America, 1815–1846 (New York, 1994); and Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief (Stanford, 1957).

3. Lincoln, “Fragment on the Constitution and the Union,” January 1861, in The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Roy P. Basler, Marian Dolores Pratt, and Lloyd A. Dunlap, 8 vols. (New Brunswick, N.J., 1953), 4:168–69; Lincoln, “Address to Members of the Agricultural Society and Citizens of Wisconsin,” 30 September 1859, in The Portable Abraham Lincoln, ed. Andrew Delbanco (New York, 1992; reprint, 2009), 189, 191.

4. Lincoln to John D. Defrees, 12 December 1860, 4:155; and Lincoln, “Speech at Hartford,” in Collected Works, 4:7–8.

5. Lincoln, “Address to Members of the Agricultural Society and Citizens of Wisconsin,” 30 September 1859, in Portable Abraham Lincoln, 191; Lincoln, “Speech at Buffalo,” 16 February 1861, in Collected Works, 4:221.

6. Lincoln, “Speech at Pittsburgh,” 15 February 1861, in Portable Abraham Lincoln, 4:211–14; Bensel, Richard, The Political Economy of American Industrialization, 1877–1900 (Cambridge, 2000), 457–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. Davis, “Farewell Address to the Senate,” 21 January 1861, The Papers of Jefferson Davis, ed. Lynda Laswell Crist et al., 12 vols. (Baton Rouge, 2008), 7:22; Davis, “Senate Resolutions,” 24 December 1860, in Jefferson Davis, Constitutionalist: His Letters, Papers, and Speeches, ed. Dunbar Rowland, 10 vols. (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1923), 4:540.

8. Davis, “Farewell Address to the Senate,” 21 January 1861, 7:22; Davis, “Interview,” March 1861, 7:84; and Davis, “Speech at Stevenson,” 12 February 1861, 7:42, all in Papers of Jefferson Davis. In 1860, the two majority African American states in the Union were South Carolina and Mississippi, with 57.2 percent and 55.2 percent of the population, respectively (Census Bureau, Population of the United States in 1860).

9. Davis to Anna Ella Carroll, 1 March 1861, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 7:64. On the safety-valve idea, see Hietala, Thomas R., Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America (Ithaca, 1985).Google Scholar

10. On the importance of the Union to northerners and especially Lincoln, see Gallagher, Gary W., The Union War (Cambridge, Mass., 2011).Google Scholar

11. Lincoln, “Reply to a Delegation of Baltimore Citizens,” 15 November 1861, in Collected Works, 5:24; Lincoln, “Message to Congress,” 3 December 1861, in This Fiery Trial: The Speeches and Writings of Abraham Lincoln, ed. William E. Gienapp (New York, 2002), 113.

12. This Fiery Trial, 115. Antebellum American political economists from both the North and South, such as Henry Charles Carey and Jacob Newton Cardozo, questioned the validity of classical economics, for example, Thomas R. Malthus’s Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), for the United States with its abundance of resources, especially land.

13. Davis, “Message to Congress,” 29 April 1861, in Davis, Constitutionalist, 5:72.

14. Davis, “Message to the Congress of the Confederacy,” 18 November 1861, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 7:397–421.

15. On Lincoln’s interest in the colonization of Haiti, Panama, and the British West Indies, see Sebastian N. Page, “Lincoln and Chiriqui Colonization Revisited,” American Nineteenth-Century History 12, no. 3 (September 2011): 327–46; and Philip W. Magness and Sebastian N. Page, Colonization After Emancipation: Lincoln and the Movement for Black Resettlement (Columbia, Mo., 2011).

16. Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress,” 1 December 1862, in Portable Abraham Lincoln, 293–98.

17. Lincoln, “Address on Colonization to a Committee of Colored Men,” 14 August 1862; This Fiery Trial, 131–32; Portable Abraham Lincoln, 267.

18. Lincoln, “Annual Message to Congress,” 1 December 1862, in Portable Abraham Lincoln, 296–97, 299.

19. Davis, “Speech at Jackson, Mississippi,” 26 December 1862, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 8:574.

20. Davis to Johnston, 25 February, to Varina Davis, 16 and 30 May 1862, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 8:69, 178, 204.

21. Davis, “Speech at Jackson, Mississippi,” 26 December 1862, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 8:566.

22. Davis to Vance, 1 November 1862, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 8:476–77.

23. Lincoln to James C. Conkling, 26 August 1863, This Fiery Trial, 175–77.

24. Lincoln, “To the Workingmen of Manchester, England,” 19 January 1863, 6:63–64; Lincoln to Matthew Birchard et al., 22 June 1863, 6:303–5; Lincoln to Schofield, 22 June 1863, 6:291, in Collected Works.

25. Lincoln, “Opinion on the Draft,” undated, c. September 1863, in Collected Works, 6:317–20.

26. Davis, “Speech in Richmond,” 7 January 1863, in Davis, Constitutionalist, 5:390; “Speech in Richmond,” 5 January 1864, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 9:31.

27. Davis, “Proclamation to the People,” 10 April 1863, in Davis, Constitutionalist, 5:469.

28. Davis to Johnson, 14 July 1863, 5:548; Davis, “Speech in Charleston,” 3 November 1863, 6:73; Davis, “Speech at Wilmington,” 5 November 1863, 10:49–50, all in Papers of Jefferson Davis.

29. Lincoln, “Address at Sanitary Fair,” 18 April 1864, Gienapp, This Fiery Trial, 196–97; Lincoln, “Reply to New York Workingmen’s Democratic Republican Association,” 21 March 1864, in Collected Works, 7:259–60.

30. Lincoln, “Response to Serenade,” 9 May 1864, in Collected Works, 7:334; Lincoln, “Address to the 166th Ohio regiment,” 22 August 1864, Gienapp, This Fiery Trial, 205. A day later, on 23 August, Lincoln wrote his notorious “blind” memorandum to his cabinet based on his belief that “the Administration will not be reelected” (Gienapp, 206).

31. Davis, “Speech at Augusta,” 5 October 1864, in Davis, Constitutionalist, 6:357–58; Davis, “Interview with northern emissaries James R. Gilmore and James F. Jaquess,” 17 July 1864, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 10:533–34.

32. Davis, “Speech at Columbia,” 4 October 1864, 11:82–83, in Papers of Jefferson Davis.

33. Ibid.; Davis, “Address to Soldiers,” 9 February 1864, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 10:226; Davis, “Speech at Augusta,” 5 October 1864, in Davis, Constitutionalist, 6:357–58.

34. Lincoln, “Response to a Serenade,” 10 November 1864, in This Fiery Trial, 208–9; Lincoln, “Message to Congress,” 6 December 1864, in This Fiery Trial, 212–15. Lincoln not only welcomed the increase in his vote from under 1.9 million in 1860 to more than 2.2 million, but also included the more than 1.8 million northern Democrats as another potent resource and together furnished proof that his earlier confident population growth projections were being realized. “Elections of 1860, 1864,” http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/showelection.php?year=. From Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project, University of California, Santa Barbara.

35. Lincoln, “Second Inaugural,” 4 March 1865, in This Fiery Trial, 221; Lincoln to the Military Officers Commanding in West Tennessee, 13 February 1865, in Collected Works, 8:294–95.

36. Lincoln, “Speech on Reconstruction,” 11 April 1865, in This Fiery Trial, 223–27.

37. Davis, “Speech at Charlotte,” 19 April 1865, 11:549–50, and Davis to Hugh Davis, 8 January 1865, 11:286–87, in Papers of Jefferson Davis.

38. “Conversation with Francis P. Blair,” 12 January 1865, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 11:316–17.

39. Davis to Varina Davis, 23 April 1865, in Papers of Jefferson Davis, 11:558–59.