Ways and means : Lincoln and his cabinet and the financing of the Civil War
Publication Information
New York : Penguin Press, 2022.
Physical Description
xii, 432 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm
Summary
Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis: the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. Lincoln saw opportunity to foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln's secretary of the Treasury, levied taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. The Republican-led Congress enacted legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. Through a financial lens, Lowenstein explores how this second American revolution changed the direction of the country.
Contents
- Introduction: Revolution completed
- Two crises
- Exigencies of war
- Ways and means
- The window shuts
- Legal tender
- Forgotten Congress
- Proclamation
- Chase's plan
- Cotton for cash
- Gettysburg summer
- Chase for President
- Roast mutton and partridge
- Exit secretary
- Staggering transformation
- Epilogue.