re: Party Switch

Lincoln absolutely was, but this is all relative. Lincoln was all about silencing dissent, keeping the war machine churning, and wiping out forced labor that didn’t support his war efforts. It’s hard to judge his economic policy because it was entirely focused on waging war.

Despite Lincoln’s use of federal power against states to enforce federal law at the point of a gun, the nation was pretty damn libertarian. You didn’t need a license to do, well, anything. There were no “employment” laws that had to be followed, no environmental impact studies, no affirmative action quotas, building permits, zoning laws, entitlement programs, insurance, etc. at the federal level, education, food safety, medicine, and to a large extent even manufacturing and agricultural were completely unregulated, and the federal government was only minimally involved in building infrastructure.