Free Enterprise for the Republic: On Lincoln and Röpke

What image is more quintessentially American than the pioneer courageously moving across the Great Plains in a covered wagon with his family and livestock in tow? In many ways, the hundreds of thousands of families who blazed a trail into the West made up a sort of “marching republic.” Their movement represented everything that made the United States the greatest republic in human history: tenacity, grit, and a willingness to challenge the status quo.

Much of this expansion was made possible by the Homesteading Act of 1862, passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln. The law provided settlers with 160 acres of land for a nominal fee. It was perhaps the largest act of privatization in American history. Although it may not seem obvious at first, this economic legacy stands as one of the strongest testaments to President Lincoln’s commitment to republican liberty. 

In fact, entrepreneurship has been one of the forces throughout history that has best vindicated political orders centered on the human person and his God-given rights. Both patriot-statesmen, such as Abraham Lincoln, and Christian humanists, such as Wilhelm Röpke, have seen the relationship between entrepreneurship and the human person’s natural freedom, and used that connection to lead their societies into periods of untold prosperity and happiness.

Read more in Acton Institute’s Religion & Liberty.