Chapter 14: The Sinews of War
Since the South was now losing many battles, they started to hate Jefferson Davis. Unlike Lincoln, he was a proud man and was unwilling to convince his people that he was a good leader and lashed back at critics in such a way that more people ended up hating him.
By December of 1861, the Southern Confederates no longer had enthusiasm of the war. Conscription was initiated to start volunteering by threat of coercion instead of actually coercing people into joining the army; this idea worked and the Confederate increased by 200,000 in 1862. Still, conscription was the most unpopular act passed by the Confederate government; yeomen farmers could not buy their way out of the conscription so, instead they ran away.
Conscription represented government power that extended too far, especially in terms of Confederate provisionary government. Suddenly, the "weak" federal government that Confederates desired was forcing them to do things they didn't want.
There were three ways to finance the war: taxation, borrowing, and fiat money. Taxation was the least inflationary, but was also the least desired by the southerners. Before the war, they had not been taxed much at all and since the South didn't have many public services -and one-third of the population was slaves, taxes were not necessary like they were in the industrial free North.
The Confederates financed itself through paper dollars and its value depreciated almost immediately. Soon, Southern states and most everyone was issuing notes and small-denomination "shinplasters". This shortage of valuable paper and engravers meant that most of the Confederate notes were not printed the way they are printed now and counterfeit happened frequently. Soon, the South had inflation, leading to riots as people couldn't afford goods with their inflated dollars. This inflation became a "confiscatory taxation" that mostly affected the poor. It also led to more class tension and the lower white classes began to feel alienated to the Confederate cause as they suffered. (I find this so strange since these people probably didn't have slaves either, so they were basically blindly following regional prejudice without thinking about how slavery actually affected them, though perhaps they feared competition from free blacks.)
The Confederate economy failed miserably, and by 1862, it was slowly dying under inflation, more attacks by the Union, and the Union blockade. The northern economy, on the other hand, was more adapted to the war. It relied on loans for only a part of its war financing. The rest of its financing, it did through revenues and increased taxes a lot. The Union enacted the first federal income tax ever in American history on August 5, 1861. The government passed this since it needed to make sure there was enough money to pay interest on bonds. This tax was progressive, since it exempted most wage-earners and only taxed the rich (those who earned annually more than $800).
This new society with an industrial base, capital-intensive agriculture, and big business, was all due to the Civil War, which forced the people and government to adapt in order to survive. Slowly, the Southern agrarian economy started to crumble.
Key Terms:
Questions:
Citations:
Since the South was now losing many battles, they started to hate Jefferson Davis. Unlike Lincoln, he was a proud man and was unwilling to convince his people that he was a good leader and lashed back at critics in such a way that more people ended up hating him.
By December of 1861, the Southern Confederates no longer had enthusiasm of the war. Conscription was initiated to start volunteering by threat of coercion instead of actually coercing people into joining the army; this idea worked and the Confederate increased by 200,000 in 1862. Still, conscription was the most unpopular act passed by the Confederate government; yeomen farmers could not buy their way out of the conscription so, instead they ran away.Conscription represented government power that extended too far, especially in terms of Confederate provisionary government. Suddenly, the "weak" federal government that Confederates desired was forcing them to do things they didn't want.
There were three ways to finance the war: taxation, borrowing, and fiat money. Taxation was the least inflationary, but was also the least desired by the southerners. Before the war, they had not been taxed much at all and since the South didn't have many public services -and one-third of the population was slaves, taxes were not necessary like they were in the industrial free North.
The Confederates financed itself through paper dollars and its value depreciated almost immediately. Soon, Southern states and most everyone was issuing notes and small-denomination "shinplasters". This shortage of valuable paper and engravers meant that most of the Confederate notes were not printed the way they are printed now and counterfeit happened frequently. Soon, the South had inflation, leading to riots as people couldn't afford goods with their inflated dollars. This inflation became a "confiscatory taxation" that mostly affected the poor. It also led to more class tension and the lower white classes began to feel alienated to the Confederate cause as they suffered. (I find this so strange since these people probably didn't have slaves either, so they were basically blindly following regional prejudice without thinking about how slavery actually affected them, though perhaps they feared competition from free blacks.)
The Confederate economy failed miserably, and by 1862, it was slowly dying under inflation, more attacks by the Union, and the Union blockade. The northern economy, on the other hand, was more adapted to the war. It relied on loans for only a part of its war financing. The rest of its financing, it did through revenues and increased taxes a lot. The Union enacted the first federal income tax ever in American history on August 5, 1861. The government passed this since it needed to make sure there was enough money to pay interest on bonds. This tax was progressive, since it exempted most wage-earners and only taxed the rich (those who earned annually more than $800).This new society with an industrial base, capital-intensive agriculture, and big business, was all due to the Civil War, which forced the people and government to adapt in order to survive. Slowly, the Southern agrarian economy started to crumble.
Key Terms:
- greenbacks: US paper currency
- Morrill Land Grant Act: (1862) encouraged states to use the sale of federal land grants to maintain agricultural and technical colleges
- Morrill Tariff Act: (1861) raised tariff rates to increase revenue and protect American manufacturers; started Republican program of high tariffs to maintain economy
- draft: first Conscription Act in March 1863; made all men liable for military service, could find a substitute or pay an exemption fee; led to riots by the poor since they couldn't find a way out of the draft; many fled.
Questions:
- What is happening with women at this time? The book fails to mention women much... Are they starting to step up as husbands leave to war?
- Were there censuses starting to come into effect? (Because how else would the government know who was being drafted or going to war or escaping?)
- If this is true, does this signify a new "order" of society as government becomes more organized, or has this been happening for a while?
Citations:
- McPherson, James M. "14: The Sinews of War." In Battle Cry of Freedom, 428-453. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988.
- Accessed March 11, 2015. http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2009/07/conscription.jpg.
- Accessed March 11, 2015. https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjD6LYd0LUrvVBdYd9A-D8Suvj95j4FJjifF-NaB_V3REDGBIL4fNZRJkXcyMoDU8TlJGVS5_rRYdTeMv4vtktMog7mYiwv7dEy5GUujWoeaZLf5yAxMF2R2RU9IHXQj8W1DI-HDop8M_5Y/s1600/North_Carolina_50dollar.jpg.
- Accessed March 11, 2015. http://teachinghistory.org/files/TotalFarm_0.jpg.
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