A digression into money
08/25/2010 15:45
Made a side-trip today, into the history of money in the U.S. Read:
John Jay Knox, United States Notes: A History of the Various Issues of Paper Money by the Government of the United States, 1894
A. Barton Hepburn, History of Coinage and Currency in the United States and the Perennial Contest for Sound Currency, 1903
Wilford I. King, “Circulating Credit: Its Nature and Relation to the Public Welfare" American Economic Review 10:4 (Dec 1920)
Started a couple of more recent things, that will take a couple of days. The whole point of this detour, is for me to try to get a handle on the way people used money and credit in the 1840s through the late 1860s. After this, there’s a “period” shift -- we’re suddenly into the “greenback” era and the fights over bi-metalism and money that animated a lot of the Populists and ultimately led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve system after the Panic of 1907.
BUT...there seems to be a link missing in this change. The historiography seems to jump right from the “market transition” to the gilded age and its money problems, and in doing this I think it misses an intermediate period that lasted two or three decades in some places. So I’m trying to get a handle on what I think goes into this “financial transition” -- and to see if somebody really has said something about it, and I just haven’t found it yet.
John Jay Knox, United States Notes: A History of the Various Issues of Paper Money by the Government of the United States, 1894
A. Barton Hepburn, History of Coinage and Currency in the United States and the Perennial Contest for Sound Currency, 1903
Wilford I. King, “Circulating Credit: Its Nature and Relation to the Public Welfare" American Economic Review 10:4 (Dec 1920)
Started a couple of more recent things, that will take a couple of days. The whole point of this detour, is for me to try to get a handle on the way people used money and credit in the 1840s through the late 1860s. After this, there’s a “period” shift -- we’re suddenly into the “greenback” era and the fights over bi-metalism and money that animated a lot of the Populists and ultimately led to the establishment of the Federal Reserve system after the Panic of 1907.
BUT...there seems to be a link missing in this change. The historiography seems to jump right from the “market transition” to the gilded age and its money problems, and in doing this I think it misses an intermediate period that lasted two or three decades in some places. So I’m trying to get a handle on what I think goes into this “financial transition” -- and to see if somebody really has said something about it, and I just haven’t found it yet.
Panic of 1857
08/23/2010 16:01
Paul L. Huston, The Panic of 1857 and the Coming of the Civil War, 1987.
Huston examines the economic events leading up to the Crisis in a very cursory fashion, then spends a fair amount of time discussing political and press reaction to it. This leads him to some conclusions about the role of the Crisis in foregrounding some economic issues in the sectional debate that led to the Civil War, although Huston is quick to qualify these claims and place them in a generalized “blame-everything-on-slavery” context. Interestingly, he misses the point that Republicans may have used this blaming technique as a way not only of focusing attention on issues they wanted to address, but as a way of diverting attention away from issues they wanted to ignore. The Lynn strikes, for example, were recast (by Greeley and others) as an opportunity for western expansion that (darn those southerners!) was imperiled by expansion of the slave southwest. Republican “labor policy,” the idea that low wages were due to the “degradation of labor,” diverted attention to the specific abuses of (rich Republican) capitalists, as well as to systemic problems caused by the growth of corporate (as opposed to small-producer) capitalism. The irony is, early Republicans had warned of this, but had been pushed to the sidelines.
Huston’s conclusion is that "Economic issues did not have to play a role in the election of 1860. By their own intransigence,” he says, “Democrats allowed Republicans to take advantage of the economic questions that the Panic had reinvigorated." (266) Did they? Or does his story suggest that these economic policies were not hard-wired into either party's DNA, but were arrived at contingently and maybe a little opportunistically?
One thing that does come out clearly, is the sectional nature of the Panic of 1857. It had a much less lasting impact on the South and the Northeast than it did on the West. This is interesting, for my work. Also, the really clear causal role of wheat exports on the Crisis, and the impact of the Crimean War on overproduction and then collapse in the West, is helpful. I wonder how the rebound in grain shipments to Europe ("in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1859, the United States exported 3,002,000 bushels of wheat; in fiscal year 1860 the total was 4,155,000; but in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1861, the amount grew to 31,238,000." 214) effected Western politics and the 1860 elections?
Huston examines the economic events leading up to the Crisis in a very cursory fashion, then spends a fair amount of time discussing political and press reaction to it. This leads him to some conclusions about the role of the Crisis in foregrounding some economic issues in the sectional debate that led to the Civil War, although Huston is quick to qualify these claims and place them in a generalized “blame-everything-on-slavery” context. Interestingly, he misses the point that Republicans may have used this blaming technique as a way not only of focusing attention on issues they wanted to address, but as a way of diverting attention away from issues they wanted to ignore. The Lynn strikes, for example, were recast (by Greeley and others) as an opportunity for western expansion that (darn those southerners!) was imperiled by expansion of the slave southwest. Republican “labor policy,” the idea that low wages were due to the “degradation of labor,” diverted attention to the specific abuses of (rich Republican) capitalists, as well as to systemic problems caused by the growth of corporate (as opposed to small-producer) capitalism. The irony is, early Republicans had warned of this, but had been pushed to the sidelines.
Huston’s conclusion is that "Economic issues did not have to play a role in the election of 1860. By their own intransigence,” he says, “Democrats allowed Republicans to take advantage of the economic questions that the Panic had reinvigorated." (266) Did they? Or does his story suggest that these economic policies were not hard-wired into either party's DNA, but were arrived at contingently and maybe a little opportunistically?
One thing that does come out clearly, is the sectional nature of the Panic of 1857. It had a much less lasting impact on the South and the Northeast than it did on the West. This is interesting, for my work. Also, the really clear causal role of wheat exports on the Crisis, and the impact of the Crimean War on overproduction and then collapse in the West, is helpful. I wonder how the rebound in grain shipments to Europe ("in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1859, the United States exported 3,002,000 bushels of wheat; in fiscal year 1860 the total was 4,155,000; but in the fiscal year ending June 30, 1861, the amount grew to 31,238,000." 214) effected Western politics and the 1860 elections?
Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men
08/22/2010 19:24
This is a political history. The ideology Foner discusses is primarily that of parties and their leaders and leading commentators in the press. The character who really jumps out and demands more attention is William H. Seward (Salmon P. Chase follows close in his wake, though). That’ll be helpful for me, because the history I’m working on features cameo appearances of people like Seward. Connects local events and personalities with national issues--at least, I hope it does.
The notes above are in Tinderbox. The point isn’t so much that they’re graphic, as that they are html, so they’re completely searchable. The visual aspect is based on Foner’s chapter organization. At some point, I’ll get around to looking at form as well as content; and this should help.
Gates' Farmer's Age
08/18/2010 14:02
Paul W. Gates
The Farmer’s Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860
1960
Gates is one of those obligatory texts. He was apparently a really experienced, hands-on farmer -- at least you get that impression from the detailed descriptions he gives of farming practices, techniques, and conditions. The chapters are organized thematically (land, then machinery, then breeding, etc.), which doesn’t enhance the historical story. In fact, the thread of the story was pretty well lost under all the detail, as far as I was concerned. But that was okay. The detail held a lot of good material for later investigation. I’m thinking of it this way (click it for a bigger version):
It’s a little random -- related more to my interests than Gates’ -- but that’s probably a good thing. While I think he provided a wealth of valuable detail, I don’t think he sustained his basic argument that everything in American history (including the sectional differences that led to the Civil War) was the result of agriculture.
The Farmer’s Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860
1960
Gates is one of those obligatory texts. He was apparently a really experienced, hands-on farmer -- at least you get that impression from the detailed descriptions he gives of farming practices, techniques, and conditions. The chapters are organized thematically (land, then machinery, then breeding, etc.), which doesn’t enhance the historical story. In fact, the thread of the story was pretty well lost under all the detail, as far as I was concerned. But that was okay. The detail held a lot of good material for later investigation. I’m thinking of it this way (click it for a bigger version):
It’s a little random -- related more to my interests than Gates’ -- but that’s probably a good thing. While I think he provided a wealth of valuable detail, I don’t think he sustained his basic argument that everything in American history (including the sectional differences that led to the Civil War) was the result of agriculture.
more recently...
08/18/2010 11:49
I’ve been reading a bunch of books I haven’t gotten through writing my thoughts about. Paul W. Gates’ The Farmer’s Age: Agriculture, 1815-1860, Eric Foner’s Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men, the Heidlers’ Henry Clay, Bray Hammond’s Banks and Politics in America. Also Virgin Land and The Machine in the Garden, along with a little puttering around literature including a bit of Hamlin Garland.
Not quite sure what I’m going to do about posting -- sort of seems like it’s time to start putting this all together into something. But I don’t think that’s something I’m going to blog -- at least not quite yet.
Not quite sure what I’m going to do about posting -- sort of seems like it’s time to start putting this all together into something. But I don’t think that’s something I’m going to blog -- at least not quite yet.
