In his 1955 textbook on American economic history, Ross Robertson mirrored a new view of the Civil War and economic growth when he argued that “persistent, fundamental forces were at work to forge the economic system and not even the catastrophe of internecine strife could greatly affect the outcome” (1955: 249). As they looked for the keys to American growth in the nineteenth century, these economic historians questioned whether the Civil War - with its enormous destruction and disruption of society - could have been a stimulus to industrialization. In the years after World War II, a new group of economic historians - many of them trained in economics departments - focused their energies on the explanation of economic growth and development in the United States. Harold Faulkner devoted two chapters to a discussion of the causes and consequences of the war in his 1943 textbook American Economic History (which was then in its fifth edition), claiming that “its effects upon our industrial, financial, and commercial history were profound” (1943: 340). The “Beard-Hacker Thesis” had become the most widely accepted interpretation of the economic impact of the Civil War. By the time of the Second World War, Louis Hacker could sum up Beard’s position by simply stating that the war’s “striking achievement was the triumph of industrial capitalism” (Hacker 1940: 373). Charles Beard labeled it “Second American Revolution,” claiming that “at bottom the so-called Civil War – was a social war, ending in the unquestioned establishment of a new power in the government, making vast changes – in the course of industrial development, and in the constitution inherited from the Fathers” (Beard and Beard 1927: 53). During the first half of the twentieth century, historians viewed the war as a major turning point in American economic history. The Civil War has been something of an enigma for scholars studying American history.
Ransom, University of California, Riverside
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