lincoln and infrastructure -- 7/6/2026

06 Jul 2026

lincoln and infrastructure -- 7/6/2026

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Today's selection-- from Abe by David S. Reynolds. Abraham Lincoln supported large-scale government spending for infrastructure from the earliest days of his political career:

“Lincoln's commitment to internal improvements was evident in his role in what at the time was a huge event in the county: the much-ballyhooed voyage of the Talisman, a 136-foot steamboat loaded with 150 tons of freight that left Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 2 and headed, via several rivers, including the Sangamon, toward Springfield, Illinois; A successful voyage would open up substantial new trading possibilities between Springfield and eastern and Southern markets, because transportation by river was much cheaper than over land. Excitement rose to a fever pitch when the Talisman reached Beardstown, about a hundred miles downstream from Springfield. Lincoln joined many others from the area who used their axes all along the shore of the Sangamon River to clear away overhanging branches so that the Talisman could complete its voyage. Cheering crowds swarmed on the riverbanks as celebratory banners flapped on trees and whiskey-fueled parties raged.

“When the boat made it to a mill just below Springfield on March 24, the festivities grew even more joyous. Long poems hailing the Talisman were published locally, and a tremendous ball was held to honor the skipper, who was accompanied by his beautiful ‘wife’ (it was soon learned, to widespread dismay, that she was actually a prostitute). After a week's holdover in Springfield, the Talisman tried to head on a return voyage, but the river's level had sunk, and the boat could not turn around. Lincoln was hired, along with J. Rowan Herndon, to navigate the boat back to Beardstown—a challenging task indeed, especially because at New Salem the vessel got stuck on the dam, part of which had to be torn away to allow for downstream passage. Although the Talisman made it to Beardstown, and Lincoln earned forty dollars for his efforts, the voyage was deemed a failure. Four years later, another steamboat, the Utility, attempted a similar voyage to Springfield but got stuck at Petersburg, where it was dismantled and sold as lumber. That was the end of the steamboat plans for Springfield—plans that in 1842 became moot when the Northern Cross Railroad reached the town.

“Between the Talisman fiasco and the railroad's arrival, Lincoln was a vocal promoter of internal improvements. He backed the Illinois and Michigan Canal, a project initiated in 1824 but in quiescence until the early 1830s, when Lincoln arrived on the political scene. Upon its completion in 1848, the canal, which nearly bankrupted the state at a cost of more than $6 million, would connect the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River via a number of rivers in Illinois that were connected to Chicago by a thirty-six-mile waterway. For Lincoln, the canal was an ideal project, for it meant utilizing nature to improve society. His aim was to become ‘the DeWitt Clinton of Illinois’—a reference to the New York politician behind the construction of the nation-changing Erie Canal.

A daguerreotype of Lincoln, taken around 1847

“Lincoln got the opportunity to push the canal project when he was elected to the legislature in 1834. The canal met with stiff opposition among southern Illinoisans, who believed that the canal would spur the emigration of ex-New Englanders from the northern part of the state to the lower sections. Southern legislators spoke out against the canal ‘for fear it would open the way for flooding the state with Yankees.’ A common saying in southern Illinois was ‘Why, a Michigan Canal would wash Gawd's country clean down to the Gulf,’ because it would inundate the land with ‘damn Yankees.' The Southerners preferred the plan for a railroad running from Peru, on the Illinois River about a hundred miles southwest of Chicago, to Cairo, on the Mississippi River in the extreme southern part of the state. Not only did Peru seem safely distant from the Yankee-producing Great Lakes, but the Illinois River was a boundary between the state's two sections; below it, the state became increasingly dominated by Southern-born settlers. Cairo, at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, connected with the markets and people of the South.

“Lincoln had his own section-specific plans for canals and railroads. In his ‘Communication’ he generalized, ‘There cannot justly be any objection to having rail roads and canals, any more than to other good things.’ Besides calling for the straightening of the Sangamon River, he joined other Whigs in backing the Illinois and Michigan Canal. He saw value in railroads as well, despite their high cost. He advocated a rail line from some northern point on the Illinois River down to Jacksonville and then thirty-five miles east to Springfield. ‘This is, indeed, a very desirable object,’ he wrote. ‘No other improvement that reason will justify us in hoping for can equal in utility the rail road.’

“By supporting a railroad whose terminus was Springfield, Lincoln was quietly dispensing with the idea of a terminus in a deep-southern Illinois town like Cairo. He was laying plans for the development of his area of the state—plans also integral to the hoped-for work on the Sangamon River and the Talisman experiment. He seemed to sense that the Yankee-Southern merging that was already occurring in his central region would be economically strengthened by the internal improvements he had in mind.

“Although his loss in the 1832 race temporarily stymied his plans, his success in 1834 paved the way for their realization. By 1834, when he was supplementing his meager salary in the post office with his work as an assistant surveyor, he had little time for official campaigning, but he met many people in the region during his mail deliveries and his trips as a surveyor. He won people over with his personality and his integrity. Despite his Whig affiliation, influential Democrats, including Judge Bowling Green and many roughs, came to his support. They appreciated his friendliness and leadership qualities. His physical strength again had an impact. When a punch-out erupted while he was giving a speech at Mechanicsburg, he rushed into the audience and broke it up. We don't know if the free-for-all was alcohol generated, but we can be sure that the temperate Abe did not follow the usual custom of plying voters with liquor. A citizens' meeting of the time said that the typical candidate treated audiences ‘with ardent spirits, for the purpose of influencing their votes’; many political rallies degenerated into carousals in which ‘a large portion of the voters would be drunk and staggering about town, cursing, swearing, hallooing, yelling, huzzaing for their favorite candidates, throwing their arms up and around, threatening to fight, and fighting’; ‘hundreds of them’ would mount horses and gallop through towns ‘screeching like so many infernal spirits broke loose from their nether prison."