Corporations did exist but they were very rare. There were a number of factors that used to limit the growth of corporations: There used to be no general incorporation laws - each corporation had to be specifically approved by an individual act of legislation. Corporations were established by the states - each state had its own laws and corporations were legally limited to their state of origin. And most states put limitations on corporations - they were limited to only dealing with a specific product or to exist for a specified duration to give two common practices.
No, Abe Lincoln did not start “Corporate America”. Corporations in some form or another go back as far as the Roman empire. A corporation is just an way to structure a business.
What Lincoln did was recognize that industrialization, not agriculture was the wave of the future. And since industry often requires a great deal more capital than farms, it is not surprising that corporations rose along with industrial America.
Oh and…
…actually, they were European companies, non American.
No individual politician played much of a role in the growth of large corporations in America. For the most part, businessmen did it by themselves.
To the extent that government midwifed the process at all, it was mostly at the state level: (1) via aid to railroads and canals, which lay down the infrastructure that made national markets and corporations profitable; and (2) by relaxation of the incorporation laws as per Little Nemo’s post.
Abe Lincoln did have some peripheral involvement:
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By signing the transcontinental railroad bill into law, he got the Feds into the railroad aid business. Given the corruption that ensued, it was probably a bad idea.
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The Civil War acted as a spur to industrialization, which required capital, and Lincoln chose to wage the war rather than let the South secede. But it was hardly his choice; after the rebels fired on Fort Sumter, the Northern public wouldn’t have stood for anything else. In any case, industrialization was a by-product, not the reason for the war.
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Simply by preventing secession, Lincoln maintained a larger, unified playing field on which later corporations could operate. But it hardly mattered; unless the United States fractured into atoms, industrialization and incorporation would have happened anyway (as they did in Europe at the same time).