On June 20, 1848, Congressman Abraham Lincoln so strongly believed in the long-term economic benefit of improvements that he used some of the limited time allotted to freshmen congressmen to argue for internal improvements on the floor of the House. He began by rebutting the recent Democratic platform written for the 1848 nomination of Lewis Cass, which concluded the Constitution did not confer upon the federal government the power to carry on a system of internal improvements. Lincoln disagreed and systematically dismantled each of the positions offered to support that conclusion.
Lincoln provided concrete examples of the argument he previewed at the River and Harbor Convention. On the position that the burdens of improvements “would be general, while their benefits would be local and partial,” Lincoln did not deny that there was some degree of truth. He then pointed out the logical axiom that “no commercial object of government patronage can be so exclusively general, as to not be of some peculiar local advantage; but on the other hand, nothing is so local, as to not be of some general advantage.” As an example of the former, he reminded members that while a navy that protects shipping offers benefits to the nation as a whole, it also provides a specific local advantage to the port cities of Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston well beyond any benefit to interior towns in Illinois.
Then he noted the converse is also true, that projects seemingly local can provide general benefit. Using the newly opened Illinois and Michigan Canal as an example, Lincoln acknowledged that “considered apart from its effects, it is perfectly local. Every inch of it is within the state of Illinois.” But the effects are widespread. “In a very few days” after its opening, he explained, “sugar had been carried from New-Orleans through this canal to Buffalo in New-York.” Having selected that route for its reduced cost of transport, a savings that seller and buyer presumably shared, “the result is, that the New Orleans merchant sold his sugar a little dearer; and the people of Buffalo sweetened their coffee a little cheaper.” This benefit resulted “from the canal, not to Illinois where the canal is, but to Louisiana and New-York where it is not.” This example “shows that the benefits of an improvement are by no means confined to the particular locality of the improvement itself.”
Lincoln warned that if the nation refuses to make improvements of a general kind because it might provide benefits locally, then by using the same logic, states could refuse to make an improvement of a local kind because its benefits might be more general. In essence, the “if you do nothing for me, I will do nothing for you” mentality would inhibit both local and national economic development. He hoped instead that both the nation and the states would “in good faith” do what they could in the way of improvements such that inequality perceived in one place might be compensated in another, “and that the sum of the whole might not be very unequal.”
He also argued that “The true rule, in determining to embrace, or reject any thing, is not whether it have any evil in it; but whether it have more of evil, than of good. There are few things wholly evil, or wholly good. Almost everything, especially of governmental policy, is an inseparable compound of the two; so that our best judgment of the preponderance between them is continually demanded.”
Lincoln would continue to press for government support of internal improvements. His lifelong obsession with internal improvements as a means of economic and personal growth was demonstrated by his support for progressive legislation, the inclusion of which he encouraged in the 1860 Republican platform. It was the North’s emphasis on internal improvements, and the South’s disdain for it, that made the difference during the Civil War.
A side note: June 20, 2023 is the 160th anniversary of West Virginia becoming a state, another important development during the Civil War.
More on internal improvements in Lincoln: The Fire of Genius.
[Photo by David J. Kent]
Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America is available at booksellers nationwide.
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David J. Kent is President of the Lincoln Group of DC and the author of Lincoln: The Fire of Genius: How Abraham Lincoln’s Commitment to Science and Technology Helped Modernize America and Lincoln: The Man Who Saved America.
His previous books include Tesla: The Wizard of Electricity and Edison: The Inventor of the Modern World and two specialty e-books: Nikola Tesla: Renewable Energy Ahead of Its Time and Abraham Lincoln and Nikola Tesla: Connected by Fate.
