U.S. History

They borrowed when prices were high and had to repay when prices were low. Should the legislature rescue them, or would rescue only deepen the ruin?

A wartime boom, a flood of bank paper, a speculative rush for western land, and then the reckoning.

America's first great depression arrived without a villain: no embargo, no war, no single blundering minister to blame. It seemed to rise out of the economy itself.

Vail recognized that market competition and “regulation and control are inconsistent with each other, and cannot be had at the same time.” Obviously, Vail favored the latter.

The modern way of dealing with criminal behavior has been mass incarceration, yet crime abounds. Murray Rothbard believed that restitution and other methods were superior to the present state-run system.

The articles in this issue help us to understand the true meaning of both the Declaration of Independence and the revolutionary movement that produced it. And, what it is that we are actually celebrating on this 250th anniversary.

Patrick Newman is an assistant teaching professor of economics at the University of Tampa and the Murray N. Rothbard Research Fellow at the Mises Institute. He is the author of several books, the most recent is Cronyism: Rise of the Corporatist State, 1849–1929 (2026). 

Birzer does not grasp the importance of states’ rights in preserving liberty against the leviathan central government. In Randolph’s words, “I love liberty; I hate equality.” However, readers will learn a great deal from reading it.

If you have time to read only one book about the American Revolution, it should be this one. It formed the basis for Rothbard’s conclusion that “in the deepest sense, the American Revolution was a conscious majority revolution in behalf of libertarianism and against power."

The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution it launched were unique because they were focused on decentralization, liberty, and limitations on state power. This movement did not “create a nation.” Rather, it seriously challenged and limited the Hobbesian state.