And now, looking back to the struggling and suffering South, one asks with wonder how these results could have transpired.
Unlike the North, the South went into the struggle with her whole soul and her whole strength. Every man came forward with one accord, willing to work in the way he best might for the cause he held sacred; ready to give his arm, his life, and all he had beside, for the general good. Whole regiments were put into service, armed, uniformed and equipped, without costing the central government one dollar; and in some instances—as of that spotless knight, true gentleman and pure patriot, Wade Hampton—raised by the energy, paid for by the generosity, and led to death itself by the valor of one man!
Corporations came into this general feeling. Railroads put their rolling-stock and their power in the hands of the Government; agreeing, as early as the origin of the Montgomery government, to take their pay at half rates and in government bonds. Banks put their facilities and their circulation, manufacturers their machinery and foundries their material, at public disposition, for the bare cost of existence. Farmers and graziers cheerfully yielded all demanded of them! And how the women wrought—how soft hands that had never worked before plied the ceaseless needle through the tough fabric—how taper fingers packed the boxes for camp, full from self-denial at home—shall shine down all history as the brightest page in story of noble selflessness.
In the deadly hail of hostile batteries; in the sweltering harvest-field of August, and at the saddened and desolate fireside of December, the southern people wrought on—hoped on!
And the result of all this willing sacrifice was greatly to reduce the burdens on the treasury. For reasons before stated the southern army was smaller, and its transportation cost far less, than that of the enemy. Its equipment was far cheaper, and its subsistence for every reason infinitely smaller.
Still, with an outlay per diem scarcely more than one-tenth that of the North—which amounted to near $4,000,000! daily; with the teeming fields and bursting warehouses filled with cotton—a year back, auriferous in every fiber—worthless now; and with a people thus united to act and to aid it, the Southern Treasury continued to flood the country with paper issues, based only on the silver lining of the cloud that hung darker and ever darker over the South.
With one-tenth the population in the field and the rest working for them, there was no real demand for this inordinate issue. One-tenth the volume of currency properly distributed, with a coincident issue of bonds, would have relieved the actual necessities of buyer and seller. But still the wheels worked on—still Treasury notes fluttered out, until every bank and store and till was glutted with them.
Then the results of the inflation came with relentless and rapid pace. With the people still convinced of the inevitable outcome of their united efforts; with the thinkers of the South still evolving their theories of the philosopher's stone to change all this mass of paper into gold; and with the press of the country blatant about the speedy and certain collapse of northern credit; above all, with millions of pounds of cotton rotting in our warehouses—Confederate money, little by little, bought less and less of the necessaries of life.
At first the change was very gradual. In the summer of 1861, persons coming to Richmond from Europe and the North spent their gold as freely as the Treasury notes. Then gold rose to five, ten, fifteen, and finally to forty per cent. premium. There it stuck for a time. But the issues increased in volume, the blockade grew more effective, and misgivings about the Treasury management crept into the minds of the people. Gold went up again, ten per cent. at a jump, until it touched a hundred—then rapidly to a hundred and fifty.
"The whole system looks devilish blue," said Styles Staple, who was curing an ugly wound in his thigh. "I've been writing 'the house' about it, and the Gov. thinks the hour has passed for utilizing the cotton. If that can't be impressed by the Government, the whole bottom will fall out of this thing before many months."
"If it ever passes the two hundred," solemnly quoth the colonel in answer, "egad, sir! 'twill go up like a rocket! Up, sir! egad! clean out of sight!"
I candidly answered that I could not see the end of the inflation.
"I do," Styles growled—"Repudiation!"
"Well, that's no end of a nobby thing!" cried Will Wyatt, who was always bored about anything more serious than the last book, or charging a battery. "Cheerful that, for a fellow's little pile to go up like a rocket, and he not even to get the stick."
"He can have the smoke, however," answered Styles more cheerily, as he hobbled over and gave a $5 note for a dozen cigars.
And this began rapidly to be the tone, everywhere out of trade. A vague feeling of insecurity about the power of the Government to check the onward flood of issue prevailed in all classes. This produced a reckless expenditure for anything tangible and portable. And at last the colonel's prediction was verified; for money touched the two hundred per cent., and went up—up—by the one hundred; until in a time incredibly short—and with such a suddenness that people had no time to be surprised—the Confederate treasury note stood still for a moment, worth twenty to one for gold!
This may be accounted for, in small part, by the scarcity of supplies and the increasing efficiency of the blockade. But it must be remembered that the value of gold remained a constant quantity and the gold dollar in Richmond, note-flooded and blockade-bound, bought more of almost any article than it ever had before.
With a string of active vessels watching every port and cove, to snap up the daring ventures between the island ports and the coast; with a powerful enemy thundering at every point of entrance to southern territory, still the fortunate man who had gold, or who could draw upon Europe, or the North, actually lived much cheaper than in any place beyond the lines! Singular as this statement may appear, it is actual fact. At this moment—before the depreciation of currency became such as to give it no value whatever—board at the best hotels in Richmond was $20 per day—equivalent to $1 in gold, while it was $3 in New York, or Washington; a suit of clothes could be had for $600 or $30 in gold, while in New York it cost from $60 to $80; the best whisky was $25 per gallon—$1.25 in gold, while in the North it was more than double.
Rapidly gold rose in the market, and in the absence of stocks became the only vehicle for financial gambling. From time to time, as a brilliant success would grace Confederate arms, the fall of Treasury credit would be checked. But it was only for the moment—and it went down steadily, rapidly, fatally. And as steadily, as rapidly and as fatally did the Treasury shuttles fly; spinning out the notes, like a whirlwind in autumn. And tighter grew the blockade, and fewer the means of supply. Stocks on hand were long since gone; little came to replace them, and the rich were driven to great straits to live, while the poor almost starved.
Away from the army lines and great centers of cities, the suffering was dreadful; impressments stripped the impoverished people; conscription turned smiling fields into desert wastes; fire and sword ravaged many districts; and the few who could raise the great bundle of paper necessary to buy a meal, scarce knew where to turn in the general desolation, to procure it even then. In the cities, it was a little better; but when beef, pork and butter in Richmond reached $35 per pound; when common cloth was $60 per yard, shoes $200 to $800 per pair, and a barrel of flour worth $1,400, it became a difficult problem to fill one's stomach at any outlay.
And all this time the soldiers and Government employés were being paid on a gold basis. The private received eleven (afterward twenty-one) dollars per month—amounting at the end of 1863 to just fifty-five cents in coin! At the last payments, before the final actions at Petersburg, the pay of a private for one month was thirty-three cents!
Nor were officers of the army and navy better paid. With their rank in the old service guaranteed them, they also received about the same pay, when gold and paper money were of equal value. Later Congress believed it would be a derogation from its dignity to "practically reduce the value of its issues," as one member said, "by raising officers' pay." Thus a lieutenant in the navy, probably of twenty years' experience, and with a family dependent upon him, though debarred from all other labor, received $1,500 per year—equal in gold to the sum of $4.25 per month; while a brigadier, or other higher general, received nearly $8 per month.
These things would provoke a smile, did they not bring with them the memory of the anguished struggle to fight off want that the wives and children of the soldier martyrs made. I have gone into detail further than space, or the reader's patience may warrant; and still, "Behold, the half is not told!"
I would not, if I could, record the bitter miseries of the last dreadful winter—paint the gaunt and ugly outlines of womanhood, squalid, famished, dying—but triumphant still. One case only will tell the tale for all the rest. A poor, fragile creature, still girlish and refined under the pinched and pallid features of starvation, tottered to me one day to beg work.
"It is life or death for me and four young children," she said. "We have eaten nothing to-day; and all last week we lived on three pints of rice!"
Will Wyatt, who was near, made a generous offer of relief. Tears sprang into the woman's eyes as she answered, "You mean kindness, major; but I have never asked charity yet. My husband is at the front; and I only ask a right—to be allowed to work for my children!"
Such were the sufferings, such the spirit of southern women!
When it was too late—when the headlong road to ruin had been more than half-way run—some feeble attempts were made to stay the downward rush. Of course, they were useless—worse than useless, in that they made widespread a feeling of distrust, already deep-seated with reflecting men. The volume of currency had reached such expansion that its value was merely nominal for purposes of subsistence, when the devices of Mr. Memminger to lessen it began to be pressed in earnest.
The people had now begun to see that the whole theory of the Treasury was false; that the moment for utilizing the cotton supply had indeed been lost; and they murmured loud and deep against the Secretary and the President; whom they believed not only retained him in office, but endorsed his destructive policy. Mr. Davis, the people said, was autocratic with his Cabinet, and would have displaced Mr. Memminger summarily, had he not favored that peculiar financial system. Mr. Davis, too, was known to have been hostile to the absorption and exportation by the Government of all the cotton. He had, moreover, recommended against any legislation by Congress to contract the currency and stop the issues. Now, therefore, the inflation and utter inadequacy of the paper money was laid at his door, as well as Mr. Memminger's; and the people, feeling there was no safety for them, began to distrust the good faith of such reckless issue. A system of barter was inaugurated among the country people; and they traded off things only needful for others absolutely essential. They began to feel a dread of taking the notes of the Government, and in many instances refused them utterly. And yet these very people yielded cheerfully to the constantly insolent, and not infrequently illegal, demands of the impressment officers.
In the cities, too, a point had been reached where the promise of the Government to pay was looked upon as a bitter joke. Bonds were constantly refused in business transactions, and only Treasury notes—as a medium of temporary exchange—were accepted.
Then, as a necessary measure, came the imperative order for funding the currency. All the millions of old issues were to be turned into the treasury, by a certain date, and exchanged for bonds. If the unlucky holder could not, or would not, deposit or exchange, he lost thirty-three per cent. of the value of the Government pledge he held. The old issues went rapidly out of sight; but the measure did not appreciably lessen the current medium, while it did very appreciably lessen the confidence in the integrity of the Department.
It is but the first step i............