Holy Wars, Civil Wars: Religion and Economics in Nineteenth-Century America

Abstract

Maybe it was merely the Zeitgeist. Maybe in the years of reactionary resurgence, under a government scant on social sympathy and ethical integrity, amid pitiless profiteering and a proliferation of economic theories to justify it, historians also lost the capacity and concern to connect business behavior and moral standards. Or maybe it was something more than the momentary temper of the time. Maybe it had its origin in developments far deeper and its source in dynamics far more fundamental than the souring of the American spirit in the age of Ronald Reagan.