Pondering Lincolnisms

I find it incredible that Lincoln could sign CSA cotton trading permits for a favored few hundred merchants and traders - making them millionaires by fiat should their deals go through - while at the same time lamenting privately,

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. Corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed. - November 21, 1864

The biography that thoroughly accounts for contradictory Lincolnisms is long, long overdue.