The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications
- 1 June 1975
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in The Journal of Economic History
- Vol. 35 (2) , 299-326
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022050700075070
Abstract
We are right to see power, prestige, and confidence as conditioned by the Civil War. But it is a very easy step to regard the War, therefore, as a jolly piece of luck only slightly disguised, part of our divinely instituted success story, and to think, in some shadowy corner of the mind, of the dead at Gettysburg as a small price to pay for the development of a really satisfactory and cheap compact car with decent pick-up and road-holding capability. It is to our credit that we survived the War and tempered our national fiber in the process, but human decency and the future security of our country demand that we look at the costs. What are some of the costs? Robert Penn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War (New York: Random House, 1961), pp. 49–50.Keywords
All Related Versions
This publication has 3 references indexed in Scilit:
- Watersheds and Turning Points: Conjectures on the Long-Term Impact of Civil War FinancingThe Journal of Economic History, 1974
- Cotton Competition and the Post-Bellum Recovery of the American SouthThe Journal of Economic History, 1974
- Did the Civil War Retard Industrialization?The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 1961