Title: Abraham Lincoln and the Global Economy
Headings: Abraham Lincoln and the Global Economy
Abraham Lincoln and the Global Economy
A Nation in Turmoil
Lessons for the Global Economy
Economic Opportunity for All
To Lincoln, the promise of upward mobility was key both to the nation’s economic growth and to its social stability.
A Unified National Economy
An Active Government Role
Policies to Fit the Place
Opportunity Amid Turmoil
Emerging Economies Across the Years

Content: A Nation in Turmoil
It’s commonplace to say that we live in a period of unprecedented change. But in the view of many historians, the America of Lincoln was a time of changes at least as jarring. The country entered the nineteenth century with a predominantly agricultural economy, composed largely of scattered rural communities. Then, in quick succession, steamboat service was introduced, scores of canals were constructed, thousands of miles of railroad track were laid, and countless new telegraph lines were strung throughout the country. Almost overnight, large numbers of what had been generally self-sufficient local economies found themselves, ready or not, part of a relentlessly changing and expanding national economy. Competition no longer came from the next town but from producers in many parts of the country—and from industries abroad. People traveled farther and more often. New technologies also changed the workplace, as Americans used to laboring for themselves or in small shops began to take jobs in the nation’s growing number of factories. The rise of factory-based mass production and frenetic railway construction led to an economic boom. But the nation’s growth was interrupted by financial crises—known at the time as panics—in 1819, 1837, and 1857.