Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, by Roger Lowenstein (Book Review)

Authors

David K. ThomsonFollow

Document Type

Book Review

Publication Date

2-2023

Abstract

Just days after the Army of the Potomac’s defeat at the battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, a Harper’s Weekly article addressed the question of United States finance during the Civil War. The author asked how the United States government was paying for a conflict that would command expenses in excess of $2 million a day by the end of the war. “When the history of this war comes to be written,” the article noted, “no part of it will attract more attention or command more admiration than the chapters which relate to finance” (Harper’s Weekly, May 9, 1863, p. 290). Despite such an assertion and the wealth of scholarship pertaining to the American Civil War, little attention has been dedicated to this question of finance. To that end, in Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, journalist Roger Lowenstein attempts to address this financial question by offering a general overview of the Union’s financial war machine.

Comments

Review of Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War, by Roger Lowenstein.

ISBN: 9780735223554

DOI

10.1353/soh.2023.0021

Recommended Citation

Thomson, D. K. (2023). [Review of the book Ways and means: Lincoln and his cabinet and the financing of the Civil War, by R. Lowenstein]. Journal of Southern History 89(1), 152-153. Doi:10.1353/soh.2023.0021.