A Hercules in the Cradle

A Hercules in the Cradle PDF Author: Max M. Edling
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226829367
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
Explores the origin and evolution of American public finance and shows how the nation’s rise to great-power status in the nineteenth century rested on its ability to go into debt. Two and a half centuries after the American Revolution the United States stands as one of the greatest powers on earth and the undoubted leader of the western hemisphere. This stupendous evolution was far from a foregone conclusion at independence. The conquest of the North American continent required violence, suffering, and bloodshed. It also required the creation of a national government strong enough to go to war against, and acquire territory from, its North American rivals. In A Hercules in the Cradle, Max M. Edling argues that the federal government’s abilities to tax and borrow money, developed in the early years of the republic, were critical to the young nation’s ability to wage war and expand its territory. He traces the growth of this capacity from the time of the founding to the aftermath of the Civil War, including the funding of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Edling maintains that the Founding Fathers clearly understood the connection between public finance and power: a well-managed public debt was a key part of every modern state. Creating a debt would always be a delicate and contentious matter in the American context, however, and statesmen of all persuasions tried to pay down the national debt in times of peace.

A Hercules in the Cradle

A Hercules in the Cradle PDF Author: Max M. Edling
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226829367
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Get Book Here

Book Description
Explores the origin and evolution of American public finance and shows how the nation’s rise to great-power status in the nineteenth century rested on its ability to go into debt. Two and a half centuries after the American Revolution the United States stands as one of the greatest powers on earth and the undoubted leader of the western hemisphere. This stupendous evolution was far from a foregone conclusion at independence. The conquest of the North American continent required violence, suffering, and bloodshed. It also required the creation of a national government strong enough to go to war against, and acquire territory from, its North American rivals. In A Hercules in the Cradle, Max M. Edling argues that the federal government’s abilities to tax and borrow money, developed in the early years of the republic, were critical to the young nation’s ability to wage war and expand its territory. He traces the growth of this capacity from the time of the founding to the aftermath of the Civil War, including the funding of the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Edling maintains that the Founding Fathers clearly understood the connection between public finance and power: a well-managed public debt was a key part of every modern state. Creating a debt would always be a delicate and contentious matter in the American context, however, and statesmen of all persuasions tried to pay down the national debt in times of peace.

Citizen Hamilton

Citizen Hamilton PDF Author: Alexander Hamilton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780742549753
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
In this elegant collection, Donald R. Hickey and Connie D. Clark bring together enlightening, important, and amusing selections from Hamilton's speeches, published writings and personal letters. As we come to understand his thoughts on subjects as diverse as the Constitution, love, war, liberty and honor, we find that his words are often as applicable in our own time as they were in his.

Benjamin Franklin's Vision of American Community

Benjamin Franklin's Vision of American Community PDF Author: Lester C. Olson
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 9781570035258
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 350

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Book Description
"Olson contends that attention to the visual images created in each of these roles dramatizes fundamental changes in Franklin's sensibility concerning British America. In 1754 Franklin was an American Whig supporter of the British Empire's constitutional monarchy. During the late 1750s and early 1760s he veered toward increasing the power of the Crown over Pennsylvania by changing the colony's form of government before ultimately rejecting constitutional monarchy and advocating republican politics during the 1770s and 1780s. The shifts in Franklin's fundamental political commitments are among the most arresting aspects of his life. Benjamin Franklin's Vision of American Community highlights these changes as it examines his pictorial representations of British America through several decades."--BOOK JACKET.

Jefferson's Treasure

Jefferson's Treasure PDF Author: Gregory May
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1621577643
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 546

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Book Description
George Washington had Alexander Hamilton. Thomas Jefferson had Albert Gallatin. From internationally known tax expert and former Supreme Court law clerk Gregory May comes this long overdue biography of the remarkable immigrant who launched the fiscal policies that shaped the early Republic and the future of American politics. Not Alexander Hamilton---Albert Gallatin. To this day, the fight over fiscal policy lies at the center of American politics. Jefferson's champion in that fight was Albert Gallatin---a Swiss immigrant who served as Treasury Secretary for twelve years because he was the only man in Jefferson's party who understood finance well enough to reform Alexander Hamilton's system. A look at Gallatin's work---repealing internal taxes, restraining government spending, and repaying public debt---puts our current federal fiscal problems in perspective. The Jefferson Administration's enduring achievement was to contain the federal government by restraining its fiscal power. This was Gallatin's work. It set the pattern for federal finance until the Civil War, and it created a culture of fiscal responsibility that survived well into the twentieth century.

Perfecting the Union

Perfecting the Union PDF Author: Max M. Edling
Publisher:
ISBN: 0197534716
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
In Perfecting the Union, Max M. Edling focuses on the reform of the American Union brought about by the framing and adoption of the Constitution and the resulting division of duties and powers between the national government and the states. He argues that the Constitution profoundly altered the structure of the American Union and made the federal government more effective than under the defunct Articles of Confederation, but does not accept that federal power expanded at the expense of the states. He therefore offers a powerful new interpretation of the Constitution that has important implications for our understanding of the American founding.

The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin

The Life & Extraordinary Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin PDF Author: Vladimir Voĭnovich
Publisher: Northwestern University Press
ISBN: 9780810112438
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
Ivan Chonkin is a simple, bumbling peasant who has been drafted into the Red Army. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he is sent to an obscure village with one week's ration of canned meat and orders to guard a downed plane. Apparently forgotten by his unit, Chonkin resumes his life as a peasant and passes the war peacefully tending the village postmistress's garden. Just after the German invasion, the secret police discover this mysterious soldier lurking behind the front line. Their pursuit of Chonkin and his determined resistance lead to wild skirmishes and slapstick encounters. Vladimir Voinovich's hilarious satire ridicules everything that was sacred in the Soviet Union, from agricultural reform to the Red Army to Stalin, in a refreshing combination of dissident conscience and universal humor.

Adam Smith’s America

Adam Smith’s America PDF Author: Glory M. Liu
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691240868
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
The unlikely story of how Americans canonized Adam Smith as the patron saint of free markets Originally published in 1776, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was lauded by America’s founders as a landmark work of Enlightenment thinking about national wealth, statecraft, and moral virtue. Today, Smith is one of the most influential icons of economic thought in America. Glory Liu traces how generations of Americans have read, reinterpreted, and weaponized Smith’s ideas, revealing how his popular image as a champion of American-style capitalism and free markets is a historical invention. Drawing on a trove of illuminating archival materials, Liu tells the story of how an unassuming Scottish philosopher captured the American imagination and played a leading role in shaping American economic and political ideas. She shows how Smith became known as the father of political economy in the nineteenth century and was firmly associated with free trade, and how, in the aftermath of the Great Depression, the Chicago School of Economics transformed him into the preeminent theorist of self-interest and the miracle of free markets. Liu explores how a new generation of political theorists and public intellectuals has sought to recover Smith’s original intentions and restore his reputation as a moral philosopher. Charting the enduring fascination that this humble philosopher from Scotland has held for American readers over more than two centuries, Adam Smith’s America shows how Smith continues to be a vehicle for articulating perennial moral and political anxieties about modern capitalism.

American Empire

American Empire PDF Author: A. G. Hopkins
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691196877
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 1002

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Book Description
"Compelling, provocative, and learned. This book is a stunning and sophisticated reevaluation of the American empire. Hopkins tells an old story in a truly new way--American history will never be the same again."--Jeremi Suri, author of The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America's Highest Office.Office.

Washington's Government

Washington's Government PDF Author: Max Edling
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 081394614X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Washington’s Government shows how George Washington’s administration—the subject of remarkably little previous study—was both more dynamic and more uncertain than previously thought. Rather than simply following a blueprint laid out by the Constitution, Washington and his advisors constructed over time a series of possible mechanisms for doing the nation’s business. The results were successful in some cases, disastrous in others. Yet at the end of Washington’s second term, there was no denying that the federal government had achieved remarkable results. As Americans debate the nature of good national governance two and a half centuries after the founding, this volume’s insights appear timelier than ever. ContributorsLindsay M. Chervinsky, Iona College * Gautham Rao, American University * Kate Elizabeth Brown, Huntington University * Stephen J. Rockwell, St. Joseph’s College * Andrew J. B. Fagal, Princeton University, * Daniel Hulsebosch, New York University * Rosemarie Zagarri, George Mason University

The Works of Alexander Hamilton

The Works of Alexander Hamilton PDF Author: Alexander Hamilton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Finance
Languages : en
Pages : 524

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Book Description