By Lynn Stuart Parramore / AlterNet
An Inconvenient Truth About Lincoln (That You Won’t Hear from Hollywood)
The president was a complicated man whose advocacy of railroads birthed a network of monopolies.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com
Over this Thanksgiving week, you may find yourself in a movie theater watching Steven Spielberg’s treatment of Abraham Lincoln and the battle to pass the 13th Amerndment, which abolished slavery once and for all. There’s much to be said for Lincoln: marvelous acting, less mythologizing than usual, and a fascinating window into raucous realpolitik. Spielberg’s film stands several cuts above any movie depiction of the Lincoln presidency you’re likely to see.
Lincoln himself stands several cuts above the vast majority of U.S. presidents. After some equivocating, he freed the slaves, a monumental undertaking that was a service to the country and to humanity in general. He was also friendlier to workers than most presidents, an affinity noted by Karl Marx, who exchanged letters with Lincoln leading up to and during the Civil War. (You won’t see the GOP acknowledging that!)
But there’s a side of Lincoln that no Hollywood film shows clearly: He was extremely close to the railway barons, the most powerful corporate titans of the era.
Liberals are fond of referring to Lincoln’s concern about corporate power, summed up in a letter he is often claimed to have written to Col. William F. Elkins in November 1864:
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country….corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
Lincoln’s observation is prescient. But here’s the inconvenient truth: Some of the most powerful corporations of his time were wildly enriched by having a friend in one Abraham Lincoln.
This friendship goes back to Lincoln’s early days as a scrappy young lawyer. After being admitted to the bar in 1837, he hopped around and finally landed in Springfield, Illinois in the law practice of William H. Herndon in 1844. Like any young lawyer, he had to hustle to handle enough cases to live comfortably. And, like most young lawyers, he went where the money was. And the money was in the burgeoning railroad industry.
In 1851, Lincoln tried his first major railroad case, representing the Alton & Sangamon Railroad before the Illinois Supreme Court. The defendant had bought stock on the belief that railroad lines would run near his home and give his property value a boost. Unfortunately for him, the Illinois legislature subsequently amended the company’s charter and changed the route so that it no longer ran near his land. The defendant refused further payments to the railroad company, arguing that the original contract was altered and thus nullified.
Lincoln argued otherwise, and convinced the Supreme Court. His victory was a big deal and set a precedent that was evoked throughout the rest of the century. The railroad industry was deeply impressed. Lincoln’s career as a railroad lawyer took off.
Through Lincoln’s skilled legal arguments, the railroad barons increased their wealth and a lot of others got the short end of the stick. Land owners were sharply limited in the compensation they could receive when a right-of-way was granted over their property for a railroad line. As historian James W. Ely Jr. has documented, Lincoln proposed that the supposed “offsetting benefits” of such lines could be held against claims of damages. In other words, a farmer could be told that he would benefit from the railroad line, and was therefore entitled to less compensation when a track ran across his field. This assumed benefit was highly speculative. Often estimates turned out to be way off-base. The offsetting-of-benefits argument was held by many to be grossly unfair and became deeply unpopular. But it was great for the railroad barons, and sparked increased railroad development.
Lincoln also argued in court that farmers and ranchers would have to bear the expense of building fences so that their animals did not wander onto train tracks. Through his carefully prepared cases, railroad companies got windfall tax exemptions that many felt constituted favoritism and unfairly burdened other taxpayers. Through his prowess, railroads won the right to limit liability for damage to cattle and other animals caused by delay in transit.
Lincoln first appeared for the Illinois Central Railroad, probably the largest business corporation in the state, in May 1853. He was handsomely rewarded for his successful advocacy for the company. By October of that year, Illinois Central placed him on retainer and gave him the special bonus of a free annual pass on the line.
It’s important to point out that despite Lincoln’s commitment to the railroad industry, he also handled suits against the carriers. Ely reminds us that lawyers in those days couldn’t afford to take only cases on one side. So whatever his philosophical leanings, Lincoln went for the cases that would support his practice. This plays out in his handling of cases related to slavery. Though Lincoln was a lifelong opponent of slavery, he would represent the interests of slave owners, such as runaway recovery, when he was paid to do so.
Lincoln was also a Whig, and as such, railroads were a key part of his vision for economic growth. As an Illinois legislator, Lincoln threw his support behind state subsidies for internal improvements and voted for several railroad charters. Like many other Whigs, he believed that railroad expansion would bring enormous economic and social benefit to the country.
During the late 1850s, Lincoln collected more fees from Illinois Central Railroad than from any other single client, and he was closely associated with Illinois Central until his election to the presidency. Just before his nomination for president in May 1860, Lincoln won a big tax case for his main client, Illinois Central.
Lincoln was elected president on a platform that declared: “That a railroad to the Pacific ocean is imperatively demanded by the interests of the whole country; that the Federal Government ought to render immediate and efficient aid in its construction.” President Lincoln signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 and the 1864 amendments to that act. He was clearly a major railroad booster in the political world.
The relationship between corporate interests like the railroad industry and slavery was complex. Political scientist Thomas Ferguson has observed that some of the railway tycoons genuinely disliked slavery, and their support for Lincoln had an element of moral and philosophical conviction. But for most, the bottom line was the bottom line. They needed an advocate who could help them expand a profitable industry westward, and Lincoln was their man. In his essay “Beyond Their Means? The Costs of Democracy From Jefferson to Lincoln,” Ferguson writes:
“There is no doubt about the deep involvement of railroads and allied business interests in the Lincoln candidacy from its earliest days. Nor is there any question that the lawyer who made a famous argument on behalf of the rights of railroads to build bridges anywhere won the nomination by garnering crucial support from iron manufacturers, coal mining interests, and other firms intent upon tariffs, land grants, and other national developmental measures.”
The railroad industry connected the country and did indeed bring many benefits. No longer did every community have to be self-sufficient. The materials needed to build the railroads boosted other industries, like iron and steel.
But there’s a reason the railroads feature so prominently in the ever-popular board game Monopoly (which you might break out during the holidays). The railroads were America’s first big business. The industry led to the growth of Wall Street, which needed to handle the enormous amounts of capital required to build and operate the lines. As they grew more powerful, the railroad companies began to squeeze out competitors and charge outrageous prices. Farmers were held hostage to railways that refused to move their goods unless they paid what was demanded. Because of their wealth, railroad barons could afford to buy and rent politicians in Washington.
Nineteenth- and early 20th-century cartoonists depicted the monopoly threat in the form of a gigantic octopus, its tentacles reaching into every nook and cranny of the country. America, for a long time, was held in a stranglehold by the railroad monopoly.
*For more on Lincoln’s railroad advocacy, see James W. Ely Jr.’s “Abraham Lincoln as a Railroad Attorney”.
Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of ‘Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.’ She received her Ph.d in English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing and semiotics. Parramore is a frequent commenter on political, economic and cultural topics on television, radio, and web outlets. She is the Director of AlterNet’s New Economic Dialogue Project. Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.
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SELECT original COMMENTS
What is YOUR opinion?
Neal
I thought Lincoln liked Frederick Douglass a lot:
https://www.google.com/search?…
and maybe Liberia instead of some Brittish protectorated islands………lol
(Edited by author 3 days ago)
Dale Ruff
Like other champions of the rights of blacks (such as the late Senator Byrd who went from the KKK as a youth to 45 years of being the champion of minority rights, with a 100% rating from the NAACP), Lincoln started as a conventional racist (as did Thomas Jefferson, who owned 200 slaves and only freed 9 in his will)’ but evolved into the Great Emancipator. We have to accept change in people if we are to understand them.
The ideas of a young man, when tested in the crucible of experience, will change.
We must look to the mature ideas of the man (or woman) to understand his developed thinking.
That is why Emerson said “Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”
Great minds evolve and develop. Quoting Lincoln in 1848, as a state Senator, must be done in the context of where his ideas developed later when he was President facing monumental problems.
I think cities and counties should be able to secede. I think individual houses should be able to secede. Let there be a nation called “None of the above” and I will gladly secede to join that nation, which has never waged war, enslaved human beings, or exterminated the original inhabitants.
I pledge allegiance to None of the Above, a land without death or taxes. I pledge my honor and fortune (it aint much) to None of the Above.
Citizenship is forced on us at birth. It should be choice, and from what I have seen of nations, I would choose None of the Above.
Join me here, where there is no corruption, no propaganda, no inequality or injustice. Secede and take out citizenship in the bastion of human liberty, None of the Above.
ripuree
I would’ve agreed with the whole first paragraph, had you not included Thomas Jefferson as one who (like Lincoln) started out as a conventional racist, but later transformed into an Emancipator. As far as I know at no time did Thomas Jefferson loose his hate of black people. And not only did his will not free the majority of his slaves, but because he squandered the wealth that slaves made for him, he died heavily in-debted. Forcing those humans who spent a lifetime enabling Thomas Jefferson to have a life of unearned privileges, to have to start all over again as slaves to new masters (many at old ages) to clear up Jefferson’s debt.
And had he not joined Napoleon to hate Haitians for freeing themselves from slavery, Haiti would not have been subjected to so much of the combined might of so many embittered white men who’re committed to holding long grudges against any black people who seek to live like men and not mice. Jefferson and Napoleon’s grudge against Haiti was so intense, that they encouraged other European Nations to maintain a seeming eternal “oppress Haiti campaign” which up to Clinton’s era, ensured that any hand stretched towards Haiti, was to obstruct and suppress. Thus Haiti is yet to recover from whatever behind the scene deals of oppression Thomas Jefferson co-designed and co-signed.
Furthermore, Thomas Jefferson was the first Statesman to offer the greatest degree of official dehumanization of the black race. He stated that while Indians could be civilized as brothers of the white man, he wasn’t quite sure that blacks were even of the same specie as all other groups. Of course that did not stop him from raping and breeding how many black woman, girls and possibly black men and boys; of which we’ll never know.
Thomas Jefferson implored science to seek to find out if black people were human. And a hundred years later, white scientists set out to find the answer and came up with their conclusive answer that all other groups were off-springs of Aryans, and were thus all one big happy Caucasian Clan, with blacks left out at left field. And while we know and accept a different truth today, the hint is still left in-situ, that straight haired people’s of color are children of White Caucasian. (Even those with skin blacker than the blackest of black).
Such is the conniving, covert racist B.S. that is operating in the collective subconscious of Caucasians of Color today still. They’re honored to feel that they’re children of whites and not of Negroes. And while the Caucasian badge of Honor no one wants to reconsider. When the fact is brought up that peoples of color could not possibly get their color from humans without color. Or when some blacks try to tell black people to get wise and unite their left-outside status to work for the collective benefit of ourselves; those who want the lie to remain operating like a silent computer virus disabling its first victims subliminally, will cry that; “there’s just One Human Race that we should all honor”. Consequently, the lie is no longer acknowledged as still embedded and operating. Therefore no more attempts are being done to delete what we don’t acknowledge is there.
Fortunately though, the results of the last election might be saying what people are afraid to let their voices declare. Which is; Caucasians of Color may have come to realize that the Caucasians status they so prefer, is just a farce, a mirage. Because while their addition to whites definitely create a greater and stronger alliance of all groups of humans against Black-Negroes, in reality the greatest automatic benefits of “whiteness” was never intended to be shared with any other; but whites.
So I am sorry, but I see no evidence that Thomas Jefferson was not a very mean-spirited, always conniving anti-black racist; who lived his whole life being hypocritical and ungodly in terms of black people. And succeeded in inflicting great harm on black people even from his grave. Haiti is still hurting from the anti-black collusion of Thomas Jefferson and Napoleon. So I beg your pardon, but Thomas Jefferson died an unredeemed hater of black folks.
ruffsoft
ripuree, your entire spirited response is based on a misreading of my post. Jefferson was not meant to be included as an Emancipator (his reference was in parenthesis) and I agree his denunciation of slavery as a younger man, despite being a slaver owner, was later in life muted into decades of silence on the subject. In the same paragraph, I pointed out this hypocrisy by pointing out he freed only 9 of his 200 slaves. Sorry, perhaps my construction was awkward.
As for Jefferson hating blacks, I have seen no real evidence of that. He held conventional stereotypes of racism but I think some his relationships show an affection for selected slaves (such as his mistress. In my view, he felt the black race was inferior, incapable of “civilization” and yet held slavery as an evil…so he thought they should be freed and shipped back to
Africa, as a younger Lincoln once also thought (with blacks going voluntarily to Central America ).
Jefferson never evolved beyond his status as a slave master and his condemnation of slavery and so he stuffed his contradiction, whcih America has played out ever since inside and grew silent on the subject.
I think he had racist views but did not hate his slaves. He was schizophrenic on race, as many are. He was NOT an emancipator. Nor, in my humble view, a hater…just a typical racist of the age where racism was the norm. He was the American contradiction (equality for all and slavery for some) embodied in one person. His idealism and his realism were incompatible so he stopped dealing with it. We are still living it out……….