Mark R. Wilson

In this examination of the Union military-industrial complex of the American Civil War, the issue is how the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Army wound up being the dominant player, due to being a recognized reservoir of expertise, leading to an almost technocratic system of economic management. This is as opposed to a federal system dominated by the state governments, or arrangements dominated by political favoritism.

As it is, the author finds that the real fault line was not over whether the wartime economy would be controlled by politicians in Washington, or the state governors, or Army bureaucrats. No, it was public dislike of a system exploited by "middlemen" with the financial depth to handle large-scale orders made on credit that bred the most controversy. This is particularly when the sense was that small producers and individual workers were being kept from the commanding heights of capital.

As for the long-term implications of this experience, the author suggests that they were deeper then the rapid deconstruction of the wartime economy might suggest. Examples are given in terms of the impact on civil-service reform, the rise of the transcontinental railroads, and the whole example in the long term of how large-scale economic enterprise might be conducted in the United States.… (altro)