A more appropriate title for Abraham Lincoln is not The Great Emancipator but The Great Centralizer.

In the eyes of many Americans, Lincoln is the most important american political figure because the War between the States so fundamentally transformed the nature of American government.

Lincoln thought of himself as the heir to the Hamiltonian political tradition, which sought a much more centralized government, one that would plan economic development with corporate subsidies, financed by protectionist tariffs and printing the money by the central government.

This agenda achieved little political success during the first seventy years of the nation’s existence, but was fully implemented during the first two years of the Lincoln administration.

Before the War, government in America was limited, highly decentralized, and worked for the defense of individual liberties. The War created the highly centralized state Americans labor under today.

The Constitution stood in the way of Lincoln’s political ambitions. Lincoln’s illegal acts are precedents that did irreparable harm to constitutional liberty in America:

1. He launched a military invasion without the consent of congress.
2. Suspended Habeas Corpus; imprisoning thousands of northern citizens without trial for merely opposing his policies.
3. Censored all telegraph communication.
4. Imprisoned dozens of opposition newspaper publishers.
5. Nationalized railroads.
6. Used federal troops to interfere with elections.
7. Confiscated firearms.
8. Deported an opposition member of congress, Clement L. Villandigham after he opposed Lincoln’s tax proposal.
9. Destroyed the idea of the Union as a voluntary association of states.

Lincoln was not a champion of equality

1. Between 1854 and 1860 On at least fourteen occasions Lincoln said unambiguously that he believed that the negro race was inferior to the white race.
2. Lincoln was a lawyer who in 23 years of litigation never defended a runaway slave, but defended slaveowners.
3. Lincoln met in the White House with freed black leaders and implored them to lead a colonization movement back to africa, and developed plans to send every last black person to Africa, Haiti, and Central America.
4. In his famous Cooper Union speech of 1860, he advocated the peaceful deportation of blacks.

Dozens of countries ended slavery peacefully during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but only the United States had warfare associated with emancipation. There was violence during the abolition in some other countries as Colombia and Venezuela, where the emancipation became an instrument of the revolutionaries who sought state power.

In virtually every other country there was some form of compensated emancipation, the cost of the War between states was approximately $6.6 billion the North’s share would have been more than enough to purchase the freedom of every slave (and give each one 40 acres of land and a mule).

Lincoln was a Mercantilist

Lincoln sugarcoated the centralization of governmental power by repeatedly referring to it as “Saving the Union” to install his combination of policies known as Mercantilism.

Mercantilism as defined by economist Murray Rothbard is:

A system of statism which employed economic fallacy; Special subsidies, monopolistic privilege, protectionist tariffs, to privilege groups favored by the state.

Consumers pay higher prices because of reduced competition and fewer choices.

National banking is part of the mercantilist agenda, if government simply print paper money in order to finance subsidies, the economic cost becomes the inflation.

It was mercantilism, the very system that Adam Smith railed against in his epic defense of capitalism, “The Wealth of Nations”

Karl Marx himself wrote Lincoln in 1964:

Sir: We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority.

Get all the details of the real Lincoln in this two books by Thomas J. DiLorenzo.:

The Real Lincoln, A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda and an Unnecessary War.

Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed to Know About Dishonest Abe

In the 1790’s the Republicans, led by Thomas Jefferson, and the Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton were the first political parties in the Western world.

Unlike loose political groupings in the British House of Commons or in the American colonies before the Revolution, both had reasonably consistent and principled platforms, relatively stable popular followings, and continuing organizations.

Their conflict was about the nature of the federal government. Should the central government be dominant or the state’s government. This are their basic views:

Federalism
Hamilton and the federalists believed in a strong central government.
Jefferson and the republicans believed in states rights and a limited central government.

Fears
Hamilton and the federalists feared anarchy.
Jefferson and the republicans feared tyrannical government.

Constitution
Hamilton and the federalists believed in loose, elastic  interpretable construction of the constitution that errs on the side of giving powers to the central government.
Jefferson and the republicans believed in a strict construction of the constitution where the constitution expressly enumerated all the powers belonging to the federal government and reserved all other powers to the states.

Support base
Hamilton and the federalists support base was urban.
Jefferson and the republicans support base was rural.

Government involvement in economy
Hamilton and the federalists believed that the government SHOULD be involved in the economy to help with economic development, the central government will be the hand ruling the economy.
Jefferson and the republicans believed that the government SHOULD NOT be involved in the economy (laissez Faire) they believed in Adam Smith’s invisible hand ruling the economy.

National Bank
Hamilton and the federalists: YES 
Jefferson and the republicans: NO

Tariffs
Hamilton and the federalists believed in tariffs to protect local manufacturers.
Jefferson and the republicans believed in eliminating tariffs to get cheaper goods.

Federal assumption of state war debts. 
Hamilton and the federalists believed in centralizing the debt.
Jefferson and the republicans believed in keeping the debt separated since some states had already paid theirs (Virginia, etc…)

Foreign policy
Hamilton and the federalists were anglophiles.
Jefferson and the republicans were francophiles (supported french revolution).