Beating Plows into Bond Shares

Abstract

Gabor S. Boritt. Lincoln and the Economics of the .American Dream. Memphis, Term.: Memphis State University Press, 1978.420 + xxi pp. John A. James. Money and Capital Markets in Postbellum America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1978.293 + xv pp. Jay R. Mandle. The Roots of Black Poverty: The Southern Plantation after the Civil War. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1978.144 + xvi pp. Claude F. Oubre. Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedman's Bureau and Black Land Ownership. Baton Rouge, La.: Louisiana State University Press, 1978,212 + xvii pp. These four books cover a very broad spectrum of American life in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet, within that expanse there is a strong thread of continuity—the economic and social transformation of America in the second half of the nineteenth century and its subsequent impact upon people and institutions. These books investigate the economic thoughts and actions of Abraham Lincoln and his visions for a modernizing and industrializing America which he hoped would bring equality and economic success to all. They search for the roots of contemporary black poverty in the Southern plantation system after the Civil War and examine in detail the reasons for and consequences of the failure of the federal government to provide land for ex-slaves during Reconstruction. Finally, they analyze the development of a national banking system and capital markets in the late nineteenth century. Because Abraham Lincoln's first recorded speech in 1837 and his first political pamphlet in 1840 dealt with the banking issue, and further, because his later career was identified with the cause of the slave and ex-slave, the thematic circle is completed.