Lincoln's New Deal
Morrill Tariff (1861)
First Income Tax (1861)
Expanded Postal Service (1861)
Homestead Act (1862)
Morrill Land-Grant College Act (1862)
Department of Agriculture (1862)
Bureau of Printing and Engraving (1862)
Transcontinental Railroad Land Grants (1862, 1863, 1864)
National Banking Acts (1863, 1864, 1865, 1866)
Comptroller of the Currency (1863)
National Academy of Science (1863)
Free urban mail delivery (1863)
Yosemite public nature reserve land grant (1864)
Contract Labor Act (1864)
Office of Immigration (1864)
Railway mail service (1864)
Money order system (1864)
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Source: Daniel J. Elazar, "Comment" in Economic Change in the Civil War Era, Edited by David T. Gilchrist and W. David Lewis (Greenville, DE: Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation, 1965), 98-99.
The Republican Party that emerged in the 1850s was an amalgamation of historical influences, third parties, and interest groups. One group that entered the Republican Party was the Free Soil Party, whose primary platform was free land and subsidies for farmers. In contrast, most Democrats favored selling off the public lands to finance government expenditures, keep tariff rates low, and prevent deficit spending.
Also joining the Republican Party in the 1850s were supporters of the Know Nothing Party. The Know Nothings were most concerned about immigrants coming into the country, competing against labor, and suppressing wages. They favored restrictive immigration and protective tariffs to keep wages high, while Democrats supported both immigration and free trade.
The Whig Party formed the core of the Republican Party with its economic platform consisting of protectionism for industry, a national bank and currency, a large national debt, and a larger federal government engaged in extensive public works.
Also joining the Republican ranks were the Prohibitionists and the Abolitionists. Members of the Republican Party generally shared an opposition to slavery and advocated policies of containment and colonization.
The ambitious economic agenda of the Republican Party had its roots in the economic platforms of Federalist icon Alexander Hamilton and Whig leader Henry Clay. They advocated protective tariffs for industry, a national bank, and plenty of public works and patronage. The flurry of new laws, regulations, and bureaucracies created by Lincoln and the Republican Party during the early 1860s foreshadowed Franklin Roosevelt's "New Deal" for the volume, scope and questionable constitutionality of its legislative output.
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In fact, the term "New Deal" was actually coined in March of 1865 by a newspaper editor in Raleigh, North Carolina, to characterize Lincoln and the Republican Party platform. Lincoln’s massive expansion of the federal government into the economy led Daniel Elazar to claim, " . . . one could easily call Lincoln's presidency the ‘New Deal’ of the 1860s."[1] Republicans established a much larger, more powerful, and more destructive federal government in the 1860s, just as Bush and the Republican Congress are doing today.
In fact, modern Republicans are almost a mirror image of the original party. Protectionism was a high priority of the early Republican Party. They quickly enacted the Morrill Tariff, which raised tariff rates to extremely high levels, and their extreme protectionism continued throughout the era of Republican dominance.
There is really little debate that these Republicans were the primary proponents of protectionism, particularly in the areas of steel and textiles. Modern Republicans, from Reagan to Bush II, have given us protectionism for a variety of favored industries, including steel, as well as the "managed trade" of NAFTA and the WTO. |
