Title: The Long Story of U.S. Debt, From 1790 to 2011, in 1 Little Chart - The Atlantic
Headings: The Long Story of U.S. Debt, From 1790 to 2011, in 1 Little Chart
Business
The Long Story of U.S. Debt, From 1790 to 2011, in 1 Little Chart
FREEDOM ISN'T FREE
CIVIL WAR
IN THE TRENCHES
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
WORLD WAR II
REAGONOMICS
W.
THE GREAT RECESSION
THE ROAD TO $16 TRILLION

Content: All this work was undone, when the US had to borrow heavily to finance the war of 1812. CIVIL WAR
The next major surge in debt coincided with the US Civil War. The federal government was nearly debt-free before the war. The public debt surged from about $65 million in 1860 to $2.76 billion in 1866 . (The Lincoln administration also signed into law the first income tax in the country's history in 1862, which was repealed 10 years later.) The debt would never get below $900 million again. But a surge of late-19th-century economic growth, with a bit of inflation, helped the US gradually reduce the the Civil War debt as a percentage of economic output. IN THE TRENCHES
Again, from a GDP perspective, the US was virtually debt-free before sending the doughboys to France. In 1916, as a share of the economy the debt accounted for just 2.7% . The surge in debt associated with World War I was financed largely by selling bonds to the US public. (