A Short History of Reconstruction [Updated Edition]

by Eric Foner

To mobilize the financial resources of the Union, the government created a national paper currency, an enormous national debt, and a national banking system. To raise funds it increased the tariff and imposed new taxes on nearly every branch of production and consumption. To help compensate for the drain of men into the army, a federal bureau was established to encourage immigration under labor contracts. To promote agricultural development, the Homestead Act offered free land to settlers on the public domain, and the Land Grant College Act assisted the states in establishing “agricultural and mechanical colleges.” And to further consolidate the Union, Congress lavished grants of public land and government bonds upon internal improvements, most notably the transcontinental railroad, which, when completed in 1869, expanded the national market, facilitated the penetration of capital into the West, and heralded the final doom of the Plains Indians. The policies of the Union embodied a spirit of national economic activism unprecedented in the prewar years.