Gold and Freedom: The Political Economy of Reconstruction by Nicolas Barreyre (review)

Nicolas Barreyre’s Gold and Freedom: The Political Economy of Reconstruction is arguably the first full-length study of economic policy during Reconstruction to appear in fifty years. Since the publication of Irwin Unger’s The Greenback Era: A Social and Political History of American Finance, 1865–1879 (1964) and Walter T. K. Nugent’s The Money Question during Reconstruction (1967), historians of Reconstruction have paid little attention to finance and monetary policy. Rather, developments related to emancipation, race, citizenship, constitutionalism, reunion, and reconciliation—to name just a few areas—have dominated the scholarly agenda of the postwar years. Yet, as Barreyre persuasively demonstrates, questions surrounding political economy—in particular the tariff and currency—were just as central to political debates as the other important questions of the postwar years. Packed with insights, Gold and Freedom is a welcome addition to the historiography of Reconstruction.

Barreyre’s book is more than just a retelling of the political history of the money question and other financial issues. To be sure, Barreyre does an excellent job illuminating the complexities of the financial questions the Civil War raised that preoccupied many Americans, especially in the North. The great strength of Gold and Freedom, however, is that it successfully demonstrates the link between political debates over economic issues and more traditional questions of Reconstruction. This is important, because while the usual narrative of the postwar years rightfully places “race relations at the heart of Reconstruction,” as Barreyre point outs, “In this confrontation, the North is often forgotten” (4–5). Barreyre’s aim is to “to situate Reconstruction in a truly national framework so as to arrive at a better understanding of Reconstruction itself” by showing how debates over political economy and Reconstruction were connected (6). This approach allows historians to fully integrate the North and myriad other political issues into the larger story of Reconstruction and the South. Thus Gold and Freedom is not just a history of political economy, nor is it just a history of Reconstruction; it is both, which makes Barreyre’s contribution particularly fresh.

Barreyre divides his book into two parts. Part 1 is a thematic exploration of the relationship between politics and sectionalism, and their intersection with economic issues. Sectionalism here is not just North versus South. In the postwar years, Barreyre argues, sectionalism hinged as much on an East-versus-West axis, especially in the context of economic debates. In the opening chapter, Barreyre discusses the sectional identity of the Midwest and explores how the Midwest not only was a geographic region based loosely on shared economic interests, but also existed as a cultural construct that could transcend those interests.

Midwesterners, whose economic interests were largely agricultural, frequently conflicted with eastern bankers and manufacturers on economic issues like the tariff and currency. There were often exceptions, but as Barreyre demonstrates, the sectional identities of the Midwest and the East were strong enough that the cultural stereotyping of the western farmer or eastern manufacturer became a reflexive reaction that pervaded politics, often overriding party loyalties. In chapters titled “Gold and Paper” and “Economic Policy and Spatial Justice,” Barreyre explains how sectional identities played out in specific political debates. A series of tables, charts, graphs, and maps demonstrate conclusively that sections voted as blocs in congressional debates over economic issues.

Barreyre not only observes the often overlooked but crucial point that on financial questions both parties had an East-West split, but he also explains why that split existed in the first place. Most important, he shows the ramifications of the split for Reconstruction. In this configuration, Reconstruction politics becomes a kind of four-tiered matrix. Along with debates between Republicans and Democrats over Reconstruction, the South, and the fate of freedpeople, there were simultaneous debates between the East and West over inflation, taxation, currency, and the tariff that threatened to split both parties apart. Navigating the politics of Reconstruction required successfully moderating each...