Currency proved critical in the outcome of the war. The North was able to leverage its superior financial resources, including taking on massive quantities of debt. The South, on the other hand, never gained solid financial footing, hampered by an unbalanced economy dependent primarily on one raw product — cotton — whose value crashed due…
Economics is never far from the minds of the leaders of both the United States and the Confederate States. A year ago this week U.S. President Abraham Lincoln signed the National Currency Act, creating a national banking system, a Currency Bureau and the office of Comptroller of the Currency. The act’s primary purpose was to…
With the Confederate economy in a free-fall, many Baptist pastors, dependent upon the financial goodwill of their church members, struggle to survive. Prior to the war, Louisiana was home to some of the wealthiest counties in the entire nation, thanks to the state’s fertile soil that produced an abundance of cotton and sugar cane, soil…