years had passed since a serious tariff controversy had shaken the
North. Financial difficulties in the 'fifties were more prevalent in the
North than in the South. Business was in a quandary. Labor was demanding
better opportunities. Protection as a solution, or at least as a
palliative, seemed to the mass of the Republican coalition, even to the
former Democrats for all their free trade traditions, not outrageous.
To the Southerners it was an alarm bell. The Southern world was
agricultural; its staple was cotton; the bulk of its market was in
England. Ever since 1828, the Southern mind had been constantly on guard
with regard to tariff, unceasingly fearful that protection would be
imposed on it by Northern and Western votes. To have to sell its cotton
in England at free trade values, but at the same time to have to buy its
commodities at protected values fixed by Northern manufacturers--what
did that mean but the despotism of one section over another? When
the Republicans took up protection as part of their creed, a general
Southern coalition was rendered almost inevitable.

This, Lincoln {Missing text}. Again it is to be accounted for in part
by his near horizon. Had he lived at Washington, had he met, frequently,
Southern men; had he passed those crucial years of the 'fifties in
debates with political leaders rather than in story-telling tournaments
on the circuit; perhaps all this would have been otherwise. But one can
not be quite sure. Finance never appealed to him. A wide application may
be given to Herndon's remark that "he had no money sense." All the rest
of the Republican doctrine finds its best statement in Lincoln. On the
one subject of its economic policy he is silent. Apparently it is to be
classified with the routine side of the law. To neither was he ever able
to give more than a perfunctory attention. As an artist in politics he
had the defect of his qualities.