Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation

Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation PDF Author: Mark Thornton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780842029612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

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Book Description
What role did economics play in leading the United States into the Civil War in the 1860s, and how did the war affect the economies of the North and the South? Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation uses contemporary economic analyses such as supply and demand, modern market theory, and the economics of politics to interpret events of the Civil War. Simplifying the sometimes complex intricacies of the subject matter, Thornton and Ekelund have penned a nontechnical primer that is jargon-free and accessible. Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation also takes a comprehensive approach to its topic. It offers a cohesive and a persuasive explanation of the how, what, and why behind the many factors at work on both sides of the contest. While most books only delve into a particular aspect of the war, this title effectively bridges the gap by offering an all-encompassing, yet relatively brief, introduction to the essential economics of the Civil War. This book starts out with a look at the reasons for the beginning of the Civil War, including explaining why the war began when it did. It then examines the economic realities in both the North and South. Also covered are the different financial strategies implemented by both the Union and the Confederacy to fund the war and the reasons behind what ultimately led to Southern defeat. Finally, the economic effect of Reconstruction is discussed, including the impact it had on the former slave population. Thornton and Ekelund have contributed an overdue examination of the Civil War that will impart to students a modern way to better comprehend the conflict. Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation offers fresh, penetrating insights into this pivotal event in American history.

Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation

Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation PDF Author: Mark Thornton
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780842029612
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 158

Get Book Here

Book Description
What role did economics play in leading the United States into the Civil War in the 1860s, and how did the war affect the economies of the North and the South? Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation uses contemporary economic analyses such as supply and demand, modern market theory, and the economics of politics to interpret events of the Civil War. Simplifying the sometimes complex intricacies of the subject matter, Thornton and Ekelund have penned a nontechnical primer that is jargon-free and accessible. Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation also takes a comprehensive approach to its topic. It offers a cohesive and a persuasive explanation of the how, what, and why behind the many factors at work on both sides of the contest. While most books only delve into a particular aspect of the war, this title effectively bridges the gap by offering an all-encompassing, yet relatively brief, introduction to the essential economics of the Civil War. This book starts out with a look at the reasons for the beginning of the Civil War, including explaining why the war began when it did. It then examines the economic realities in both the North and South. Also covered are the different financial strategies implemented by both the Union and the Confederacy to fund the war and the reasons behind what ultimately led to Southern defeat. Finally, the economic effect of Reconstruction is discussed, including the impact it had on the former slave population. Thornton and Ekelund have contributed an overdue examination of the Civil War that will impart to students a modern way to better comprehend the conflict. Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation offers fresh, penetrating insights into this pivotal event in American history.

Vindicating Lincoln

Vindicating Lincoln PDF Author: Thomas L. Krannawitter
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN: 1442200642
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Was Abraham Lincoln a racist, as some critics would have us believe? Was he the father of big government, as some others maintain? Was the sixteenth president a traitor to the cause of free society and constitutional government? Are the political principles that guided him relevant today? In this provocative and timely book, Thomas L. Krannawitter sets out to defend the man many consider to be our greatest president from critics on both the left and the right. For although public opinion polls tend to rank Lincoln among the country's most venerated presidents, he is also, paradoxically, the president who is least understood. While Lincoln's name is frequently invoked in contemporary American politics, few Americans understand or agree with the moral and political principles for which Lincoln gave his last full measure of devotion. Many influential authors view Lincoln as an antiquated monument, a man of his age who knew only nineteenth-century prejudices and lacked twenty-first-century enlightenment. Other writers denounce Lincoln as a tyrant who trampled upon the Constitution and states' rights, and thereby inaugurated big government and the kind of politics feared by the Founding Fathers. Krannawitter argues that both views spring from a misunderstanding of Lincoln. Today, at precisely the moment when America is most in need of his moral and political understanding, we are more removed from Lincoln's thought than ever before. Vindicating Lincoln reintroduces us to Lincoln the statesman, the man who defended our greatest ideals of freedom and equality at the darkest moment in American history. Krannawitter shows us why it is in our interest not only to learn about Abraham Lincoln, but to learn from him—to understand that Lincoln's guiding principles were true not only for his time, but that they remain true for ours as well. On the eve of the bicentennial of his birth in 2009, Lincoln can offer moral and political guidance to us all.

Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 1816−1861

Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 1816−1861 PDF Author: Daniel Peart
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421426129
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
The first book-length study of lobbying prior to the Civil War. Since the 2008 global economic crisis, historians have embraced the challenge of making visible the invisible hand of the market. This renewed interest in the politics of political economy makes it all the more timely to remind ourselves that debates over free trade and protection were just as controversial in the early United States as they have once again become, and that lobbying, then as now, played an important part in Lincoln's government "of the people, by the people, for the people." In Lobbyists and the Making of US Tariff Policy, 18161861, Daniel Peart reveals how active lobbyists were in Washington throughout the antebellum era. He describes how they involved themselves at every stage of the making of tariff policy, from setting the congressional agenda, through the writing of legislation in committee, to the final vote. Considering policymaking as a process, Peart focuses on the importance of rules and timing, the critical roles played by individual lawmakers and lobbyists, and the high degree of uncertainty that characterized this formative period in American political development. The debate about tariff policy, Peart explains, is an unbroken thread that runs throughout the pre–Civil War era, connecting disparate individuals and events and shaping the development of the United States in myriad ways. Duties levied on imports provided the federal government with the major part of its revenue from the ratification of the Constitution to the close of the nineteenth century. More controversially, they also offered protection to domestic producers against foreign competition, at the expense of increased costs for consumers and the risk of retaliation from international trade partners. Ultimately, this book uses the tariff issue to illustrate the critical role that lobbying played within the antebellum policymaking process.

Making the Modern American Fiscal State

Making the Modern American Fiscal State PDF Author: Ajay K. Mehrotra
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107436001
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 447

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Book Description
At the turn of the twentieth century, the US system of public finance underwent a dramatic transformation. The late nineteenth-century regime of indirect, hidden, partisan, and regressive taxes was eclipsed in the early twentieth century by a direct, transparent, professionally administered, and progressive tax system. This book uncovers the contested roots and paradoxical consequences of this fundamental shift in American tax law and policy. It argues that the move toward a regime of direct and graduated taxation marked the emergence of a new fiscal polity - a new form of statecraft that was guided not simply by the functional need for greater revenue but by broader social concerns about economic justice, civic identity, bureaucratic capacity, and public power. Between the end of Reconstruction and the onset of the Great Depression, the intellectual, legal, and administrative foundations of the modern fiscal state first took shape. This book explains how and why this new fiscal polity came to be.

Political Actors

Political Actors PDF Author: Paul Friedland
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501724231
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
From the start of the French Revolution, contemporary observers were struck by the overwhelming theatricality of political events. Examples of convergence between theater and politics included the election of dramatic actors to powerful political and military positions and reports that deputies to the National Assembly were taking acting lessons and planting paid "claqueurs" in the audience to applaud their employers on demand. Meanwhile, in a mock national assembly that gathered in an enormous circus pavilion in the center of Paris, spectators paid for the privilege of acting the role of political representatives for a day.Paul Friedland argues that politics and theater became virtually indistinguishable during the Revolutionary period because of a parallel evolution in the theories of theatrical and political representation. Prior to the mid-eighteenth century, actors on political and theatrical stages saw their task as embodying a fictional entity—in one case a character in a play, in the other, the corpus mysticum of the French nation. Friedland details the significant ways in which after 1750 the work of both was redefined. Dramatic actors were coached to portray their parts abstractly, in a manner that seemed realistic to the audience. With the creation of the National Assembly, abstract representation also triumphed in the political arena. In a break from the past, this legislature did not claim to be the nation, but rather to speak on its behalf. According to Friedland, this new form of representation brought about a sharp demarcation between actors—on both stages—and their audience, one that relegated spectators to the role of passive observers of a performance that was given for their benefit but without their direct participation. Political Actors, a landmark contribution to eighteenth-century studies, furthers understanding not only of the French Revolution but also of the very nature of modern representative democracy.

Hamilton's Curse

Hamilton's Curse PDF Author: Thomas J. Dilorenzo
Publisher: Forum Books
ISBN: 0307382850
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton--two of the most influential Founding Fathers--were also fierce rivals with two opposing political philosophies and two radically different visions for America. While Jefferson is better remembered today, it is actually Hamilton’s political legacy that has triumphed--a legacy that has subverted the Constitution and transformed the federal government into the very leviathan state that our forefathers fought against in the American Revolution. How did we go from the Jeffersonian ideal of limited government to the bloated imperialist system of Hamilton’s design? Acclaimed economic historian, Thomas J. DiLorenzo reveals how Hamilton, first as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and later as the nation’s first and most influential treasury secretary, masterfully promoted an agenda of nationalist glory and interventionist economics. These core beliefs did not die with Hamilton in his fatal duel with Aaron Burr, but were carried on through his political heirs. The Hamiltonian legacy wrested control into the hands of the federal government by inventing the myth of the Constitution’s “implied powers, transforming state governments from Jeffersonian bulwarks of liberty to beggars for federal crumbs. It also devised a national banking system that imposes boom-and-bust cycles on the American economy; saddled Americans with a massive national debt and oppressive taxation, and pushed economic policies that lined the pockets of the wealthy and created a government system built on graft, spoils, and patronage. By debunking the Hamiltonian myths, DiLorenzo exposes an uncomfortable truth: the American people are no longer the masters of their government but its servants. Only by restoring a system based on Jeffersonian ideals can Hamilton’s curse be lifted, at last.

Southern Strategies

Southern Strategies PDF Author: Christian B. Keller
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700632182
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Southern Strategies is the first-ever analysis of Confederate defeat using the lenses of classical strategic and leadership theory. The contributors bring over one hundred years of experience in the field at the junior and senior levels of military leadership and over forty years of teaching in professional military education. Well-aware that the nature of war is immutable and unchanging, they combine their firsthand experience of this truth with solid scholarship to offer new theoretical and historical perspectives about why the South failed in its bid for independence. The contributors identify and analyze the mistakes made by the Confederate political and strategic leadership that handicapped the prospects for independence and placed immense pressure on Confederate military commanders to compensate on the battlefield for what should have been achieved by other instruments of national power. These instruments are the diplomatic, informational (including intelligence and public morale), and economic aspects of a nation’s capability to exert its will internationally. When combined with military power, the acronym DIME emerges, a theoretical tool that offers historians and national security professionals alike a useful method to analyze how a state, such as the Union, the Confederacy, or the modern United States, wielded or currently wields its power at the strategic level. Each essay examines how well rebel strategic leaders employed and integrated these instruments, given that the seceded South possessed enough diplomatic, informational, military, and economic power to theoretically win its independence. The essayists also apply the ends-ways-means model of analysis to each topic to offer readers greater insight into the Confederate leadership’s challenges. Southern Strategies confirms the reality that the outcome of the American Civil War cannot be boiled down to one or two simple reasons. It offers fresh and theoretically novel interpretations at the strategic level that open new doors for future research and will increase public interest in the big questions surrounding Confederate defeat.

Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South

Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South PDF Author: Michael S. Frawley
Publisher: LSU Press
ISBN: 0807171409
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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Book Description
In the aftermath of the Civil War, contemporary narratives about the American South pointed to the perceived lack of industrial development in the region to explain why the Confederacy succumbed to the Union. Even after the cliometric revolution of the 1970s, when historians first began applying statistical analysis to reexamine antebellum manufacturing output, the pervasive belief in the region’s backward-ness prompted many scholars to view slavery, not industry, as the economic engine of the South. In Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South, historian Michael S. Frawley engages a wide variety of sources—including United States census data, which many historians have underutilized when gauging economic growth in the prewar South—to show how industrial development in the region has been systematically minimized by scholars. In doing so, Frawley reconsiders factors related to industrial production in the prewar South, such as the availability of natural resources, transportation, markets, labor, and capital. He contends that the Gulf South was far more industrialized and modern than suggested by census records, economic historians like Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss, and contemporary travel writers such as Frederick Law Olmsted. Frawley situates the prewar South firmly in a varied and widespread industrial context, contesting the assumption that slavery inhibited industry in the region and that this lack of economic diversity ultimately prevented the Confederacy from waging a successful war. Though southern manufacturing firms could not match the output of northern states, Industrial Development and Manufacturing in the Antebellum Gulf South proves that such entities had established themselves as vital forces in the southern economy on the eve of the Civil War.

Luxurious Citizens

Luxurious Citizens PDF Author: Joanna Cohen
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812248929
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
Luxurious Citizens traces the ways in which Americans tied consumer desire to the national interest between 1789 and 1865 and reveals how the nation transformed individual desires for goods into an index of civic worth, placing unbridled consumption at the heart of their modern political economy.

American Civil War

American Civil War PDF Author: James R. Arnold
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1598849069
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
This essential reference work helps promote a thorough understanding of the conflict that divided the nation and proved more costly in terms of human suffering than any in American history. Coinciding with the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, American Civil War: The Essential Reference Guide offers an accessible, single-volume source on the conflict that helped define the American nation. Enhanced by historical illustrations and documents, this guide promotes a nuanced understanding of the events, personalities, and issues related to the war and its aftermath. In addition to an A–Z encyclopedia of major leaders, events, and issues, this work includes a comprehensive overview essay on the war, plus separate essays by a prominent Civil War historian on its causes and consequences. Perspective essays tackle such widely debated issues as the primary cause of the Confederate defeat and will inspire readers to exercise critical thinking skills. Biographies of military and political leaders provide insights about those individuals who played major roles in the conflict, while entries on key battles showcase the strategies of both sides as they struggled to emerge victorious.