ABSTRACT
This is the entirety of Lincoln’s first campaign speech, consisting of the three planks that made up the Whig Party platform.1 The first of these planks concerned the government’s role in money. The Bank of the United States was the foremost political issue of the day, the opposite sides being led by Senator Henry Clay for the Bank and President Andrew Jackson against. The particular institutions of American public policy have been variable, the interests behind them less so. This is especially true of monetary policy. Government sponsorship of a national bank was controversial from the beginning of the republic. Those for a strong central government wanted a national bank. The attitudes of existing banks and the public toward government involvement in money depended on the net benefits expected. Northern commercial centers wanting finance were the leading supporters of the first Bank of the United States until the developing local banks began to oppose the competition of a government agency. The less industrialized South and West were suspicious of centrally supported finance. Support for a government bank also varied over time in response to the government’s need for finance, which was greatest in war. The charters of the first and second Banks lapsed in 1811 and 1836, and nothing more of the kind was accomplished until Woodrow Wilson’s New Freedom accommodated the various groups in the Federal Reserve: noncompetitive support for the money-center banks which voluntary membership allowed the regional banks to avoid.
