Abraham Lincoln is justly celebrated as the Great Emancipator. The Civil War freed nearly 4 million African-Americans from human bondage. It thereby fulfilled the promise of the American Revolution, eradicating a major coercive blight on the country. But unfortunately, Lincoln did almost as much to repudiate as to reaffirm the radical principles of the Declaration of Independence.
To begin with, the 16th president's determination to hold the Union together with military force was an explicit rejection of the revolutionary right of self-determination. Even the London Times of Nov. 7, 1861, recognized "an exact analogy between the North and the government of George III, and the South and the 13 revolted provinces," which at the outset of the Revolution, all tolerated slavery. As a legal recourse, the legitimacy of secession was admittedly debatable, but as a revolutionary right, it is universal and unconditional. That at least is how the Declaration reads.
Moreover, Lincoln elevated the suppression of Southern independence above any concern for blacks. As he publicly explained to Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune: "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that." Fortunate for the slaves that Lincoln ultimately concluded that freeing them offered the most military and political advantages.
Beyond its horrendous cost in lives and money, the Civil War brought about a dramatic surge in the size, scope and intrusiveness of government. The radical ideology that inspired America's Revolution had been hostile to political power and contributed to a steady erosion of all forms of coercion in the years leading up to the Civil War. "By the 1850s the authority of all government in America was at a low point," writes Lincoln biographer David Donald. The great irony of the Civil War is that, at the very moment abolition triumphed, the American polity did an about-face.
The war occasioned protectionist tariffs, a vast array of internal excise taxes and the country's first national income tax. The national debt climbed from a modest $65 million to $2.8 billion. This provided the justification for inflationary fiat money and nationally regulated banking. The Yankee Leviathan also was responsible for the first federal aid to transcontinental railroads, land grants for higher education and a Department of Agriculture.
Lincoln's war delivered a blow to civil liberties. The Union imprisoned without trial or charges at least 14,000 civilians. To be sure, the greater number were citizens of either the border states or the Confederacy, and many of those arrested secured release within a month or two after swearing a loyalty oath. Nonetheless, the federal government monitored and censored the mails and telegraphs, and shut down more than 300 newspapers for varying periods.
Many of these measures were, of course, abandoned at the fighting's end. Federal spending fell from its wartime peak to only 3 to 4 percent of gross domestic product. Yet that was still twice prewar levels. In contrast to the whittling away of government that had preceded Ft. Sumter, the United States had commenced its halting but inexorable march toward the welfare-warfare state of today. This marks the Civil War -- and not the New Deal -- as America's real political turning point.
The presidency of Abraham Lincoln thus witnessed the simultaneous culmination and repudiation of the American Revolution. None of this is to deny Lincoln's sincere personal abhorrence of slavery. But like so many successful politicians, the Illinois rail-splitter was a perplexing mixture of lofty ideals and political expediency. This portrait may not jibe with the popular hagiography, but that is often what happens when you replace blind hero worship with the complexities of history.
Jeffrey Rogers Hummel, associate professor of economics at San Jose State University, is the author of "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War."