"The National Debt May Be a National Blessing": Debt as an Instrument of Character in the Civil War Era

Authors

David K. Thomson, Sacred Heart UniversityFollow

Document Type

Book Chapter

Publication Date

2021

Abstract

Of the many burdens the Civil War placed on Americans, one of the least discussed is the financial obligations it created and the postwar debate about how to retire the nation’s financial liability. Owing more than $2.6 billion by the summer of 1865, the U.S. government would face the challenge of not only paying a debt off, but also doing so with a southern population who had no qualms in repudiating such debt—just as they had done at the state level in the antebellum period. Financing the war required a degree of state-led financial innovation utterly at odds with American antebellum financial culture. The moral hazards of the anonymous marketplace from the antebellum era that criticized financiers as men of questionable character found itself replaced by a statist “The National Debt May Be a Blessing."

Comments

ISBN 9780820359656 (pbk.); 9780820359663 (hardcover); 9780820359670 (ebook)

The full text ebook is available to authorized Sacred Heart University users.

Recommended Citation

Thomson, D. K. (2021). "The national debt may be a national blessing": Debt as an instrument of character in the Civil War era. In J. Marten & C. E. Janney (Eds.), Buying & selling Civil War memory in Gilded Age America. University of Georgia Press.