Lincoln’s Free Labor System

Americans in the mid-nineteenth century could point to plenty of examples, real as well as mythical, of self-made men who by dint of "industry, prudence, perseverance, and good economy" had risen " to competence, and then to affluence." With the election of Abraham Lincoln, they could point to one who had risen from a log cabin to the White House." I am not ashamed to confess that twenty-five years ago I was a hired labourer, mauling rails, at work on a flat-boat-just what might happen to any poor man's son!" Lincoln told an audience at New Haven in 1860. But in the free states, a man knew that "he can better his condition...

there is no such thing as a freeman being fatally fixed for life, in the condition of a hired labourer." "Wage slave" was a contradiction in terms, said Lincoln." The man who laboured for another last year, this year labours for himself, and next year he will hire others to labour for him." If a man" continue through life in the condition of the hired labourer, it is not the fault of the system, but because of either a dependent nature which prefers it, or improvidence, folly, or singular misfortune." The "free labour system", concluded Lincoln," opens the way for all- gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all."