Lowenstein details the Confederacy’s missteps as it tried to raise money, as well as the federal blockade’s stranglehold on Southern ports and shipping. Chase and Lincoln’s fractious relationship is on full display here, including Chase’s multiple threats to resign and his pursuit of the presidency before and after Lincoln’s tenure. Other firsts included the federal government taking on massive amounts of debt from bond issues the establishment of a fiat paper currency issued by national banks and the solidifying of Wall Street as the nation’s financial hub. For instance, during the Civil War, the federal government successfully implemented the first-ever income tax, to pay for the mounting war costs. finances under the tenure of Lincoln and his Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. In this enlightening work of economic history, financial journalist Lowenstein ( America’s Bank) explores the massive transformation of U.S. The country’s finances had been left in shambles by the administration of James Buchanan, who had unsound fiscal and monetary policies and feared that his treasury secretary held Southern sympathies. But Lowenstein is a lucid stylist, able to explain. In the hands of a less skilled author, the litany of bonds, notes, loans and forms of currency that he discusses could become mind-numbing. When Abraham Lincoln assumed the presidency in 1861, federal coffers were practically empty. But Roger Lowenstein’s Ways and Means, an account of the Union’s financial policies, examines a subject long overshadowed by military narratives.
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