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History Unplugged Podcast

Civil War Barons: The Tycoons, Entrepreneurs, and Inventors and Visionaries Who Forged Victory and Shaped a Nation

History Unplugged Podcast

History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.23.7K Ratings

🗓️ 14 February 2019

⏱️ 56 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The American Civil War brought with it unprecedented demands upon the warring sections—North and South. The conflict required a mobilization and an organization of natural and man-made resources on a massive scale.

In this episode I talk with Jeffry Wert, author of the new book Civil War Barons, which profiles the contributions of nineteen Northern businessmen to the Union cause. They were tinkerers, inventors, improvisers, builders, organizers, entrepreneurs, and all visionaries. They contributed to the war effort in myriad ways: they operated railroads, designed repeating firearms, condensed milk, sawed lumber, cured meat, built warships, purified medicines, forged iron, made horseshoes, constructed wagons, and financed a war. And some of their names and companies have endured—Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Deere, McCormick, Studebaker, Armour, and Squibb.

The eclectic group includes Henry Burden, a Scottish immigrant who invented a horseshoe-making machine in the 1830s, who refined the process to be able to forge a horseshoe every second, supplying the Union army with 70 million horseshoes during the four years. John Deere’s plows “sang through the rich sod, portending bountiful harvests for a Union in peril.” And Jay Cooke emerged from the war as the most famous banker in America, earning a reputation for trustworthiness with his marketing of government bonds.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the History Unplugged Podcast.

0:05.4

The unscripted show that celebrates unsung heroes, Mythbust's historical lies, and rediscoveres

0:11.9

the forgotten stories that changed our world.

0:15.5

I'm your host, Scott Rank.

0:23.2

Before the Civil War, the American economy was a lot like Russia.

0:26.7

It was agriculturally based, and it depended on the labor of people who didn't have full legal rights.

0:31.8

But after the Civil War, America rapidly industrialized, and it became a lot more Western European

0:36.9

and how its economy was set up.

0:38.7

What was the tipping point?

0:40.2

Was it just the emancipation of slaves?

0:42.7

Well, it was actually a lot more than that, and it was a story of industrialists who got directly

0:47.5

involved in the war effort and radically transformed America.

0:51.8

In this episode, I'm talking with Jeffrey Wurt, who's the author of the new book, Civil War

0:56.1

Barons. The tycoons, entrepreneurs, inventors, and visionaries who forged victory and shaped

1:01.0

a nation.

1:02.3

Jeffrey argues that before the Civil War, there were plenty of inventions in America that were

1:06.4

changing it, but really, except for the expanding network of railroads and telegraph lines,

1:10.7

a lot of these inventions hadn't affected the lives of most Americans.

1:14.6

The nation was largely rural, with only small pockets of manufacturing.

1:18.7

But with the Civil War, it created an enormous wave of industrial growth and development,

1:22.7

producing a revolution in manufacturing and inventions, for example, being able to produce

1:28.0

horseshoes by the tens of millions. These innovations, sustained union troops,

...

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