The financial and economic events of the period were of the
most extraordinary kind. A huge national debt was incurred ;
paper money was issued to an excess that caused great and
sudden depreciation ; a wide-reaching system of excise taxes was
rapidly created, and as rapidly swept away ; a high protective
tariff was set up, and unexpectedly retained ; millions of slaves
became freedmen, and the entire industrial organization of the



INTRODUCTION ix

South was revolutionized. Professor Dunbar's attention was
necessarily given to all phases of the country's history, but the
financial and economic phenomena enlisted his special interest.
He gathered a fund of experience such as few economists have
been fortunate enough to possess. He learned much in the later
years of his scholarly life, and settled on conclusions and prin-
ciples which were not accurately defined in his mind during his
newspaper career. But it may be doubted whether any research
was so productive or any experience so profitable as the unremitting
observation and reflection during these years of varied economic
history. Scholarly as his work was in later life, and recondite as
were some of his researches, he never became a closet economist.
Whether discussing contemporary proposals for legislation on the
currency, or the history of banks in past centuries, he kept a
close view of the working of economic forces in their concrete
details.
