A Just and Generous Nation: Abraham Lincoln and the Fight for American Opportunity

by Harold Holzer, Norton Garfinkle

Overview

In A Just and Generous Nation, the eminent historian Harold Holzer and the noted economist Norton Garfinkle present a groundbreaking new account of the beliefs that inspired our sixteenth president to go to war when the Southern states seceded from the Union. Rather than a commitment to eradicating slavery or a defense of the Union, they argue, Lincoln's guiding principle was the defense of equal economic opportunity.

Lincoln firmly believed that the government's primary role was to ensure that all Americans had the opportunity to better their station in life. As president, he worked tirelessly to enshrine this ideal within the federal government. He funded railroads and canals, supported education, and, most importantly, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which opened the door for former slaves to join white Americans in striving for self-improvement. In our own age of unprecedented inequality, A Just and Generous Nation reestablishes Lincoln's legacy as the protector not just of personal freedom but of the American dream itself.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465073962
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	11/03/2015
Sold by:	Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	743,234
File size:	8 MB

About the Author

Harold Holzer is a scholar of Abraham Lincoln and the political culture of the American Civil War Era. He won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize and four other awards in 2015 for his book, Lincoln and the Power of the Press.

Norton Garfinkle is an economist and chair of the Future of American Democracy Foundation. He lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

PART ONE
1. Simple Annals of the Poor: Dreaming the American Dream
2. Right Makes Might: Lincoln the Candidate
3. Chain of Steel: Defender of the Union
4. Saving the Union: Lincoln the Leader
5. Wholly Evil or Wholly Good: Not Quite an Abolitionist
6. Forever Free: Lincoln the Emancipator
7. What We Say Here and What we Do Here: Lincoln the Warrior

PART TWO
8. Full Speed Ahead: Without Lincoln at the Helm
9. Positive Government: The Lincoln Legacy
10. For a Vast Future: Expanding Lincoln's American Dream
11. Government Is the Problem: Rejecting Lincoln's Legacy
12. The New Economic Debate: Clinton, Bush, and Obama

Epilogue: Government for the People: Lincoln's Unfinished Work

Editorial Reviews

…Holzer and Garfinkle have written a stimulating book. They describe convincingly Lincoln's core conviction that government must foster equal opportunity in order to build and sustain a strong middle class. With clarity and passion, they show Lincoln the pragmatist working toward that end, adjusting his words and actions to the public mood…This book gives a strong account of Lincoln's remarkable ability to make pragmatism work in the service of principle.

The New York Times Book Review - Andrew Delbanco

★ 08/31/2015
Lincoln scholar Holzer (Lincoln and the Power of the Press) and economist Garfinkle justify adding another Lincoln biography to the overflowing genre by conceiving, and supporting, a radical explanation for the great question about Lincoln’s life: Why exactly was the Civil War fought? Eschewing the traditional justifications of ending slavery or preserving the Union, the authors maintain that the overriding factor behind Lincoln’s response to the secession of the Southern states was his commitment to pursuing “economic opportunity for the widest possible circle of hardworking Americans.” That surprising thesis is based on a close reading of Lincoln’s own statements, going back to his early political life. His support for infrastructure projects while he was an Illinois state legislator resulted from his view of government’s responsibility to provide, in the authors’ words, “opportunities for working people to improve their economic status.” That thinking led him to argue that every American, regardless of their race, deserved to profit from their work. The authors spend the last third of the book tracing the fate of Lincoln’s economic agenda under his successors, giving their research a more practical angle than simply analyzing the historical record. The thesis is sure to be controversial, but Holzer and Garfinkle make their point well. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Christian Science Monitor
“Authors Harold Holtzer, a Lincoln historian, and Norton Garfinkle, an economist, succeed in presenting a thought-provoking case.”

Civil War Book Review
“But that is not to say that there is not room for more edifying books about the nation's 16th President. This is just such a book. Nothing compares to it since Gabor Boritt's Lincoln and the Economics of the American Dream, which presented Lincoln's detailed economic concerns long before he became president and what America should become… a provocative book.”

Publishers Weekly starred review
“Lincoln scholar Holzer and economist Garfinkle justify adding another Lincoln biography to the overflowing genre by conceiving, and supporting, a radical explanation for the great question about Lincoln's life: Why exactly was the Civil War fought?... The thesis is sure to be controversial, but Holzer and Garfinkle make their point well.”

Kirkus Reviews
“A compelling study.... A well-honed work of driving focus, particularly timely in this new era of economic inequality.”

Publishers Weekly
“A groundbreaking book.”

Katrina vanden Heuvel, Editor & Publisher, The Nation
“In their magisterial book, A Just and Generous Nation, Harold Holzer and Norton Garfinkle give contemporary America an Abraham Lincoln for our times. Theirs is a president who understood that the great conflict of the ages is the strife between privilege and equality, and that equal economic opportunity for all Americans is the heart of our country's more perfect union.”

Sean Wilentz, author of The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln
“Harold Holzer and Norton Garfinkle's concise study brilliantly shows all the ways the modern Republican Party has trashed the legacy of Abraham Lincoln—not only on racial justice but on the economics of the American dream. Here is exacting and responsible history put to good purpose, dispelling the amnesia and the myths that plague our public life.”

Alan S. Blinder, author of After the Music Stopped: The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the Work Ahead
“You may think nothing could change your view of Lincoln. Think again. This cogently argued and elegantly written book may do exactly that. Its tracing of a coherent line of economic thought straight through from young Abe to Barack Obama makes an engaging read.”

New York Times Book Review
“Holzer and Garfinkle have written a stimulating book. They describe convincingly Lincoln's core conviction that government must foster equal opportunity in order to build and sustain a strong middle class. With clarity and passion, they show Lincoln the pragmatist working toward that end.”

Library Journal, starred review
“This review of Lincoln's thoughts and actions and examination of subsequent administrations' willingness to promote and secure the American Dream will generate much-needed debate on the history, efficacy, and morality of government's role and responsibility in shaping an economy of fairness and growth. The future of America depends on that question.”

Daily Beast
“A Just and Generous Nation has appeared just in time. Just in time for the 2016 presidential campaigns—and for the Democrats to learn a thing or two about American history… I heartily recommend that Hillary, Martin, and Bernie read Holzer and Garfinkle's new book on Lincoln and his legacy… if Hillary, Martin, and Bernie want to redeem American democracy and save American middle-class society from the throes of plutocracy and the evils of class war from above, they would do very well to read A Just and Generous Nation.

From the Publisher

★ 09/01/2015
Acclaimed Abraham Lincoln historian Holzer (Lincoln and the Power of the Press) and noted economist Garfinkle argue that the principal driving force of Lincoln's life (1809–65), politics, and policies was the need to create the conditions that would allow and encourage "the right to rise," which for the Whig-turned-Republican Lincoln meant using government to build infrastructure, promote education, and encourage innovation. Explained is the president's opposition to secession, fight to save the Union, and move toward emancipation along with his support for government policies to open the West and stabilize currency. The authors apply the Lincoln standard to successive presidents and find that those who subscribed to his lessons, especially both Theodore and Franklin D. Roosevelt, fueled prosperity, while conservative leaders who promoted supply-side and free-market economics undermined Lincoln's legacy and weakened peoples' faith in America. VERDICT This review of Lincoln's thoughts and actions and examination of subsequent administrations' willingness to promote and secure the American Dream will generate much-needed debate on the history, efficacy, and morality of government's role and responsibility in shaping an economy of fairness and growth. The future of America depends on that question.—Randall M. Miller, St. Joseph's Univ., Philadelphia

Library Journal

2015-08-09
The acclaimed Lincoln scholar and an economist make the argument that Abraham Lincoln worked tirelessly to maintain economic opportunity for all people—a "right to rise" concept that has been sacred to politicians from then to the present. Lincoln wasn't exactly an abolitionist, write Holzer (Lincoln and the Power of the Press, 2014, etc.) and Garfinkle (Future of American Democracy Foundation), but he envisioned that all Americans could embrace the "American dream," from rags to riches as he had—even African-Americans. The authors concentrate their study on evidence of speeches and acts of Lincoln's presidency that demonstrated his pursuit of "economic opportunity for the widest possible circle of hardworking Americans." Lincoln hoped to extend Northern middle-class society into the new territories, and he abhorred the Southern aristocratic mindset that was opposed to social mobility through tariffs and internal improvements—e.g., public investment in infrastructure. New Western territories were, for Lincoln, meant for poor whites to "go and better their condition" and not for the spread of an institution, though protected by the Constitution, that restricted social mobility and depressed wages. The authors carefully sift Lincoln's speeches, beginning in 1854 with his shrewd political calculation that restricting slavery in the Western territories would mean that at some point in the near future, the "slow but sure arrival of an ever-growing western anti-slavery bloc" would spell the end of slavery in Congress. Time was on Lincoln's side, and he recognized that the nation "will become all one thing or all the other." Moreover, he used his own autobiography to sell the "self-made man" story, as the poor farmer's son who had scant education but huge motivation to better himself. In the second half of this compelling study, Holzer and Garfinkle trace how subsequent presidents managed this vastly changing postwar economic system and the shift from independent artisans to mills and factories. A well-honed work of driving focus, particularly timely in this new era of economic inequality.

Kirkus Reviews