Customer Reviews

Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War (The American Crisis Series: Books on the Civil War Era)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this book with the intention that it should complement and supplement previously read works on the "Civil War", eg.: Tom DiLorenzo's Lincoln, Jeffrey Hummel's Emancipation and Enslavement, and Charles Adams' When in the Course. It didn't disappoint. Although it is strictly an economic look at the war, it is a Human Action type (self-interest) economics. Stats and graphs add to the text, they don't overwhelm it.

The highlights---Slavery a factor, yes, but as an economic issue, much more than a moral issue. Tariffs a factor, yes, but the uncertainty about future rates, with the election of Republican Lincoln, more than the immediate antebellum rates. The Anaconda Plan worked, yes, but with a great assist from the South with its impressments, embargo, and "luxury" taxes, the Rhett Butler effect. The relationship between the financing of the war (a lot of inflation,yes) and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. When one ponders today's current account deficit, the Civil War's economics do not represent the distant past.

All in all, a book of around 160 pages including introduction,index and bibliography full of interesting interpretations of things which I thought I knew so well, yet didn't.

The collaborative effort of Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund Jr., Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation blends contemporary economic analysis and modern market theory with a history of the Civil War era to provide a comprehensive approach to Civil War history. From analysis of why and how the war began as it did to chapters contrasting the different underlying economic concerns of North and South before, during and after conflict, this provides an unusual, important analysis.