Engineering ExpansionEngineering Expansion examines the U. S. Army's role in U. S. economic development from the nation's founding to the eve of the Civil War. William D. Adler starts with a simple question: if the federal government was weak in its early years, how could the economy and the nation have grown so rapidly? Adler answers this question by focusing on the strongest part of the early American state, the U. S. Army. The Army shaped the American economy through