In his state of the Union report of December 5, 1859, President Buchanan’s Secretary of the United States Treasury issued his report stating that for fiscal year 1859, the total revenue of the US Treasury was $88,090,787. This was misleading, because $28,185,000 was ‘income’ from government borrowing. The actual total revenue from tariffs, and sale of public lands was $53,486,000. Tariff revenue contributed 92% of the total revenue of the country.
But the Congress spent $69,071,000, which was 29% more than it took in.
The value of total US exports for the year was $278,392,000. The value of the exports grown or produced in the South was 74% of the total.
In order to understand the contribution of Southern agriculture to the trade, and thus tariff and taxation structure of the entire country, the following chart shows the percentage of the total value of exports contributed by the South for the year of 1859:
U. S. Department of Commerce
International Transactions and Foreign Commerce
Agricultural Production of the South
Yearly Detail 1859
Value of : Cotton $161,434,000
Tobacco 21,074,000
Rice 2,207,000
Naval stores 3,694,000
Sugar 196,000
Molasses 75,699
Hemp 9,227
Other 8,108,000
___________
Total $196,797,926
Value of Southern manufactured 4,989,000
Cotton exports
Value of cotton component of Northern 3,669,000
Manufactured cotton exports (60%) ___________
$205,455,926
Percentage of Southern Production to
the total US exports for 1859 of
$278,392,000. 74%
Your observation that in 1862 and subsequent years federal revenues increased is because Lincoln initiated an income tax (the first time in U.S. history) and borrowed up a storm. The taxes and the loans were responsible for any increases.
Interesting subject.
Ought-six: “Interesting subject. “
Yes, and one we’ve reviewed at length before.
I think your figure of 74% is exaggerated, 55% is closer to truth, and the reasons can be spelled out, which I’ll do, hopefully later on today, when there’s more time for it.
Question: do your figures for total 1859 exports come from the December 5 Treasury report?
If they do, then we need to remember who wrote that report -- Georgia's former governor and future (briefly) President of the Confederacy, Howell Cobb.
By 1860 Cobb is effectively a secessionist Fire Eater, and these are numbers used to justify their agenda.
But more careful analysis shows at least three problems with them:
Of course, 55% is still a huge number for barely 10% of the US population.
But it turned out, during the war, that 55% was not as critical to the US economy as perhaps people like Georgia's Howell Cobb imagined.
Indeed, with the total loss of Confederate states' exports, US Federal revenues fell only 11% in 1861, then rose 22% in 1862 and doubled in each of the following years.
So, in 1860 the US Southern states were indubitably the Saudi Arabia of cotton, but just as with today, if Saudi Arabia suddenly stopped shipping oil, the world would certainly suffer, but then quickly adjust.
And that's just what happened during the Civil War.
It turned out, neither the Union nor the world generally were as dependent on Deep South products as it had seemed in 1860.
ought-six: "Your observation that in 1862 and subsequent years federal revenues increased is because Lincoln initiated an income tax (the first time in U.S. history) and borrowed up a storm.
The taxes and the loans were responsible for any increases."
Actually, income taxes were first proposed by President Madison and considered by Congress during the War of 1812.
Thankfully that war ended before such taxes proved necessary.
The Civil War was on a vastly larger scale.
The important point here is that US imports did not stop, or even drastically decrease due to the loss of Southern exports.
Instead, substitutes & alternatives were found and life in the North, if anything, was more prosperous in 1865 than it had been in 1860.