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The Essence of Liberty, Part 106
A Summary of: Lincoln Unmasked: What You're not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
Summarized by Toni Jolin
Edited by Dr. Jimmy T (Gunny) LaBaume
Chapter 11: The Origins of the Republican Party
In the early 1850's there were very few differences between the old Whig the new Republican Party. The Whig Party was always the party of interventionism with its “American System” of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare, and a government banking system.
The Republican Party picked up right where the Whig Party had left off and passed the Morrill Tariff that would “protect” mostly the Northern manufacturers from international competition. It was a protectionist tariff, not a war-financing tariff.
The party defended slavery in its 1860 party platform and supported a constitutional amendment that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery. Republican opposition to the extension of slavery into the new territories was motivated much more by politics and economics than by humanitarianism. In fact, Lincoln explicitly stated that he wanted to preserve the territories for the white race. In other words, they did not want to strike a blow against slavery. They simply just did not want black people living among them.
The party's second reason for opposing slavery in the territories was to skew the balance of political power in favor of the North. Under the “Three-Fifths Clause,” every five slaves could be counted as three persons for the purpose of determining the number of representatives from the state. If this inflation of congressional representation continued, the old Whig economic agenda of protectionist tariffs, corporate welfare, and central banking would continue to fail in congress.
Lincoln biographers have failed to understand these economic issues mostly because they are historians and not economists.
Protectionist's tariffs made the iron industry lazy and inefficient, which is invariably the case when any industry is protected from competition. Moreover, the high price of steel (resulting from the tariff) hindered the steel-using industries. Everything made of steel cost more. This, in turn, rendered American manufacturing less competitive on international markets. And, it ultimately caused America's trade partners to retaliate with high tariffs of their own. This was the second dose of economic harm done to American industry by the Republican Party.
Protectionism made the iron and steel industry inefficient and caused it to become a perennial whiner and beggar for more protection. American consumers were plundered by protectionism, which reduced their standard of living by forcing them to pay more for goods made of steel.
Protectionist tariffs were especially harmful to American farmers in two ways. First, they had to purchase expensive farm tools and machinery made of steel. Second, protectionism restricted international trade, which reduced the wealth of our trading partners, which, in turn, lowered the demand for American farm goods.
Furthermore, under the Homestead Act, the majority of the land was not given to individual settlers but to mining, timber, and railroad corporations. Giving the land away made the Republican Party very popular. It also increased pressures to keep tariff rates high. It was a way of “buying” votes in order to secure the political support of Northern industry.
Government-subsidized transcontinental railroads are the worst example in history of the corruption and inefficiency associated with “public works.”
Land grant colleges led to greater government control of higher education. The culmination is today's plague of “political correctness.” It has also led to the politicization of scientific research and the birth of a cadre of academics who are little more than “hired guns” for the government agencies that fund their research.
In addition to subsidies for large corporate farms, the uS Department of Agriculture has made markets grotesquely inefficient. It has done this through programs that pay farmers for not producing, price controls that support food prices above the free-market level causing large surpluses, and hooking millions of farmers on government debt that they will never be able to pay off.
Lincoln's National Currency Acts also created unprecedented rates of inflation.
Lincoln's “social legislation” was a precursor to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. In fact, the phrase “New Deal” was not coined by Roosevelt but by a North Carolina newspaper in 1865.
The Democratic Party was the party of limited government—until 1912 when it veered drastically to the left. On the other hand, The Republican Party was, from its inception, was the party of big government. That's why liberal historians often portray the Republican Party's nineteenth-century origins in such a heroic light.
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At the time this work was completed, Toni Jolin was a student in the School of Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences at Sul Ross State University where Jimmy T. LaBaume, PhD, ChFC is a Professor of Economics and Statistics.
Permission is granted to forward as you wish, circulate among individuals or groups, post on all Internet sites and publish in the print media as long as the article is published in full, including the author's name and contact information and the URL www.flyoverpress.com.
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