President Abraham Lincoln, consumed daily with the conduct of the Union war effort, nevertheless had time on March 22, 1864 to address in writing a meeting of the New York Workingmen’s Democratic Republican Association, acknowledging that “(P)roperty is the fruit of labor—property is desirable—is a positive good in the world.
That some should be rich, shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprize (sic). Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another….” From humble roots Lincoln through the legal profession had improved himself and had become a symbol of enterprise for the ambitious in America. Perhaps that is why Lincoln was well respected in the North and in areas of the South during the American Civil War.