| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4

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| Book Review | The Journal of American History, 91.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Sacred Debts: State Civil War Claims and American Federalism, 1861–1880. By Kyle S. Sinisi. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003. xvi, 208 pp. $50.00, ISBN 0-8232-2259-4.)

By the mid-1860s, the U.S. government faced a glut of potential claims for Civil War–related expenses. State governments alone could demand as much as $468 million for the costs of troops, supplies, and damages incurred in the Union cause. Kyle S. Sinisi argues that the states' pursuit of these claims "represented the most sustained and expensive intergovernmental contact of the three decades following the war" (p. xii). But the national government was "not terribly sympathetic" (p. 180). Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase's stringent rules made it difficult to claim reimbursement from the federal coffers. With millions at stake and the cash-strapped states desperate for help, state officials set out on a pathbreaking quest to get their (more or less) just rewards by lobbying Congress for special settlements.

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