Abraham Lincoln was a repo man. - Allen C. Guelzo

[E]mancipation cannot be so easily detached from union (which is another way of saying that racial justice and liberal democracy rise or fall with each other).

To Lincoln, slavery undercut the free labor outlook on the world because it denied advancement and self-improvement. For Lincoln, the great attraction of any economic regime was the degree to which it permitted accumulation and self-promotion. He once described the ideal system as being one where the penniless beginner starts out working for somebody else, accumulates capital on his own by dint of savings, goes into business for himself, and then eventually becomes so successful that he hires others, who in turn continue the cycle. And he spoke of that as being the order of things in a society of equals. For him, the very notion of equality is a matter of equality of openness, aspiration, and opportunity.

[V]ery little has changed in the fundamental ideology of the Democratic Party since Jackson's day.