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

During the Civil War, the presidents of the opposing sides, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, often spoke of realizing their visions of political liberty and economic prosperity. At the outset of war, they set out contrasting positions, which were based on different definitions of liberty: Lincoln regarded liberty as safeguarding the individual’s freedom from restraint; Davis’s in preserving those rights, including ownership of property, defined in relation to the state. Lincoln’s individual would then achieve prosperity through upward mobility; for Davis, the best guarantor of prosperity was expansion and free trade. When confronted by the bewildering conditions of war, both attempted to remain true to their beliefs; but Lincoln and Davis adjusted the relative priorities of prosperity and liberty, as they had to justify measures necessary for the prosecution of the war. To capture change over time, this article is organized chronologically, setting out the initial stances of each president coming into office in early 1861 and then tackling each main phase of the war down to Davis’s flight and Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865. Over the course of the war, Davis sacrificed both liberty and prosperity for the present, as these priorities interfered with fighting a defensive war for existence. Meanwhile Lincoln, whose armies had to conquer the Confederacy, had to offer something to the people in terms of liberty and prosperity now. Both Lincoln and Davis had to convincingly demonstrate that whatever happened in the present, it was in the service of a future of liberty and prosperity.¹

OPENING POSITIONS: EARLY 1861

Lincoln’s definition of liberty as no obstacles in the way of a successful career was shaped by his own experience; therefore the freedom to rise, what politicians would call today equality of opportunity, provided the basis of prosperity. Such a system required a steady stream of migrants to America with nothing, together with sufficient support provided by government development projects, funded by a tariff, to ensure that adequate opportunities were available. In contrast, Davis understood his liberty in terms of rights, especially to possess property, inherent in the preservation of a free state. The federal government’s role was to support these rights, for example, by protecting slavery. Prosperity would come from the pursuit of suitably advantageous economic policies, which from a slaveholder’s perspective meant embedding the United States in global markets for export.²

Before war broke out, Lincoln made clear his belief that the liberty of the individual was the precondition of prosperity. He defined liberty as “the principle that clears the path for all.” The authority of the Declaration of Independence “gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.” Liberty was identical to free labor. “The prudent, penniless beginner labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land for himself,” he told attendees of the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society fair in Milwaukee, “then labors on his own account another while and at length hires another beginner to help him.” As a result of this process of upward mobility, enabling the person to demonstrate his “enterprise and industry,” liberty was “the primary cause of our great prosperity.” A virtuous circle linking prosperity and liberty would ensue because “no community whose every member possesses this art can ever be the victim of oppression in any of its forms.”³

The existence of slavery rendered free labor uncompetitive and pursuit of prosperity impossible. According to Lincoln, the policy of the opposition Democratic Party “acknowledges that slavery has equal rights with liberty” and once “the barriers which protected you from it are down; slavery comes in, and white free labor that can strike will give way to slave labor which cannot!” Slavery undermined the prosperity of the white laborer because it placed downward pressure on wages. As a priority and also practical politics, slavery had to be kept out of the federal territories; in time, Lincoln...