How did a government that was spending $1 million per week in the 1850s, and which brought in a significant portion of its income as customs duties from ports in states that seceded, manage to pay for a war that was costing up to $3.5 million per day by the end? 2 Two books released this year have sought to answer that question: Ways and Means: Lincoln and His Cabinet and the Financing of the Civil War by Roger Lowenstein, and Bonds of War: How Civil War Financial Agents Sold the World on the Union by David K. “In January, economist Amasa Walker wrote on ‘men and money,’ the two elements that Walker believed were ‘indispensable to war.’ Walker added, ‘You may, indeed, have money without men, but cannot have men without money.’” 1 – David Thomson in Bonds of War Newspaper illustration of war bonds being sold in New York, via Library of Congress
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