"In Ways and Means, journalist Roger Lowenstein reveals the unlikely story of how Abraham Lincoln used the urgency of financing the Civil War to transform a union of states into one united nation. Through a financial lens, he explores how this second American revolution, led by Lincoln, his cabinet, and his congress, changed the direction of the country"-- Provided by publisher.

Upon his election to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln inherited a country in crisis: the United States Treasury had run out of money. The government had no authority to raise taxes, no federal bank, no currency. Lincoln saw opportunity to foster the economic opportunity he had always sought for upwardly striving Americans, and which he would seek in particular for enslaved Black Americans. Salmon Chase, Lincoln's secretary of the Treasury, levied taxes and marketing bonds while desperately battling to contain wartime inflation. The Republican-led Congress enacted legislation that made the government, for the first time, a powerful presence in the lives of ordinary Americans. Through a financial lens, Lowenstein explores how this second American revolution changed the direction of the country.-- Adapted from jacket