For a long time there has been a debate about what side of an issue the late Abraham Lincoln would be on; in the 1930s numerous New Deal politicians expressed their belief that Lincoln would be on their side with some Republicans asserting that Lincoln would have done things differently than FDR. While we can never be totally what Lincoln’s social views would be in different times given that his changed over the course of his life, including on civil rights, there is a bit more certainty on economic issues, and on this question, there are two Henrys who can help us answer this question, both who greatly influenced Lincoln. The first is Henry Clay, the much-admired founder and three-time candidate of the Whig Party for president. The second is a considerably less known figure but one who shines light on Lincoln’s economic views in Henry Carey (1793-1879), a major advocate of the “American School” of economics who is largely forgotten today but was quite prominent in his day.
The American School of Economics
Carey did not start off as an economist, rather as a businessman in the publishing industry, but the Panic of 1837 inspired him, at the age of 44, to study economics. He was something of a gadfly in the world of economics in his day, as British economists were overwhelmingly on the side of pure lassiez-faire, and this is where Carey was initially. However, he was persuaded by economic crises in the 1830s and 1840s that this approach fell short. Carey would start arguing in 1848 that free trade served to benefit the British empire (indeed its most prominent advocates were from Britain) and that the United States should at that stage as a nation be developing its home markets and achieving economic independence (Cowan). Thus, he would argue for tariffs to help develop the nation and build up American industry so they could compete fairly with Great Britain, a more powerful nation than the US in his time. Carey would also argue that tariffs were a mutually beneficial policy as they helped both the profits of industry and the wages of labor (Cowan). He was also a critic of economists David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus, and wrote against their views in this three volume Principles of Social Science (1858-1860). On Malthus, he wrote that he “teaches that a monopoly of the land is in accordance with a law of nature. Admiring morality, he promotes profligacy by encouraging celibacy. … Desirous to uplift the people, he tells the landowner and the laborer that the loss of the one is the gain of the other. His book is the true manual of the demagogue, seeking power by means of agrarianism, war and plunder” (Levermore, 562-66). In the late 1850s, Carey blamed tariff reductions passed and signed into law by President Franklin Pierce for the Panic of 1857, and some historians have shared his judgment. Carey was also an opponent of unions as an instrument of collective bargaining, regarding the tariff as the proper mechanism for wage growth. However, Carey was supporting tariffs for the US based on its present conditions. He hoped for a future in which the nations of the world could trade without tariffs, writing, “Of the advantage of perfect free trade there can be no doubt. What is good between the states ought to be good the world over. But free trade can be successfully administered only after an apprenticeship of protection. Strictly speaking, taxation should all be direct. Tariff for revenue should not exist. Interference with trade is excusable only on ground of self-protection. A disturbing force of prodigious power pre- vents the loom and spindle from taking and keeping their proper places by the plow and harrow. When the protective regime has counteracted the elements of foreign opposition, obstacles to free trade will disappear and the tariff will pass out of existence. Wars will cease; for no chief magistrate will dare to recommend an increase of direct taxation” (Levermore, 570).
Carey was the lead editor on articles regarding political economy for Horace Greeley’s New-York Tribune from 1849 to 1857. At that time, another economist contributed from abroad who wrote under a pen name, this other economist being none other than Karl Marx. Marx considered Carey, a staunch opponent of socialism, to be the only notable American economist and also his ideological rival, considering himself to be engaging in “hidden warfare” against him through his work for the Tribune (Marx & Engels, 78-79). Indeed, Marx even thought that Carey’s philosophy was the central impediment to a communist revolution in the United States.
Carey was a supporter of Abraham Lincoln and upon his election to the presidency, he served as an economic advisor to both him and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase. He helped draft Republican tariff bills, including the Morrill Tariff of 1861 and was influential in getting the National Bank Act of 1863 adopted. Carey was a consistent supporter of greenbacks, supporting both the Legal Tender Act of 1862 (which along with distribution of greenbacks unbacked by gold or silver and achieved the Whig goal of a unified national currency) and postwar currency inflation. The former got the support of the Republican establishment as an emergency measure for the war, but the latter was opposed as the Republican establishment was fundamentally conservative on issues of economics and finance. Whether Lincoln would have heeded Carey had he lived I think is an open question. On one hand, he was influenced by Carey in numerous facets of policy, but on the other hand, shortly before his death he had tapped Hugh McCulloch as Secretary of the Treasury, who pursued a policy of contraction of greenbacks. Would Lincoln have sought to rein in his own Secretary of the Treasury or heeded his advice?
Influence Today?
Although Henry Carey is a figure who is generally seen as a modern conservative’s go-to economist, Professor Adam Rowe, writing for Compact Magazine, argues that Henry Carey is an explaining figure for Trump’s tariffs. If Carey has any influence, this is a full circle back to the earliest days of the Republican Party.
References
Cowan, D.A. (2022, September 8). Henry C. Carey’s Practical Economics. The American Conservative.
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Henry Charles Carey. New World Encyclopedia.
Retrieved from
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Henry_Charles_Carey#google_vignette
Levermore, C.H. (1890). Henry C. Carey and his Social System. Political Science Quarterly, 5(4), 553-582.
Marx, K. & Engels, F. (1975). “Notes”. In Ryazanskyaya, S.W. (ed.). Selected Correspondence. Translated by Lasker, I. (3rd edt.). Moscow, USSR: Progress Publishers.
Retrieved from
Rowe, A. (2025, March 4). The Thinker Who Explains Trump’s Tariffs. Compact Magazine.
Retrieved from
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-thinker-who-explains-trumps-tariffs/
Mad Politics: The Bizarre, Fascinating, and Unknown of American Political History 