Borrowing and Spending (The Financial Legacy of the War it seems) is a temporary and long term unworkable solution to a nation's financial troubles.
But it did set the stage for all the future corruption and influence peddling. It also set the stage for eventual financial destruction once the borrowing got out of hand, which it would inevitably do, because people who start a spending party never get enough of their easy money "fix."
And Joe, I don't read most of your posts anymore. Too long, and too irrelevant to any worthwhile point. Your posts come across as a Civil War version of a Hare Krishna acolyte.
The US has borrowed huge sums of money for every war, starting with the Revolutionary War.
Indeed, US debt to GDP ratio never again reached Revolutionary War levels (over 35%) until FDR's New Deal and WWII.
No war before 1941 drove US debt back up to levels reached during the Revolutionary War.
DiogenesLamp: "But it did set the stage for all the future corruption and influence peddling.
It also set the stage for eventual financial destruction once the borrowing got out of hand,"
There's no hard evidence that corruption was worse after the Civil War than before, except for the fact that a rapidly growing economy offered more opportunities for some to make a quick buck.
As for "financial destruction", Civil War debt never reached the levels of Revolutionary War debt, nor did any other war before WWII.