The American System Episodes

A series examining how the United States struggled in the first half of the 19th century to give the federal government powers to develop America's infrastructure and a stable financial system in the face of pro-slavery arguments that a government with these powers also could threaten slavery -- and how Abraham Lincoln, primarily credited with leading the United States through the Civil War and emancipating African Americans from slavery, also did much more, taking measures in the early 1860s to develop America's infratsructure and reform its financial system in ways rivaled only by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s.