Why the Terrible Destruction of the Civil War? - Jeff Riggenbach - Mises Daily

Why the Terrible Destruction of the Civil War? - Jeff Riggenbach - Mises Daily: "the war's direct costs amounted to $6.7 billion. If upon Lincoln's inauguration, the government had purchased the freedom of four million slaves and granted a forty-acre farm to each slave family, the total cost would have been $3.1 billion, leaving $3.6 billion for reparations to make up for a century of lost wages. And not a single life would have been lost."