Here’s an engaging essay by Roger Lowenstein, at the WSJ, plugging a new book he’s written on the same theme: the early story of U.S. paper money and its debut by the Lincoln administration during the Civil War. This snapshot illustrates how hard it would be to overstate the transformative force of that bloody war in U.S. history. So much that has shaped and defined the modern Nation, not merely in areas of federalism and abolition, but also especially in the landscapes of law and economics, can be traced to the crucible of the 1860s. Our paper money — vested with an intangible faith in a particular living system, rather than a redemption value in a abidingly precious metal — is another ghost of that time.