SOUTHERN NEWS: The Collapse of Confederate Finances; THE TREATMENT OF THE PRISONERS (12/26/1863)

New York Times - Times Machine ^ | 12/26/1863

[Homer_J_Simpson]

We find the following additional extracts of interest in our files of late Richmond papers:

CONFEDERATE FINANCES.

A FORCED LOAN A NECESSITY.

From the Richmond Examiner, Dec. 19.

The people of the Confederate States are bracing themselves to meet the financial crisis so long predicted and now so near at hand. The heroic common places about the "last dollar," which have been current since the beginning of the war, are to be translated into action, and while individuals may shrink from the test, the bulk of the nation is ready for the question. Everything must be surrendered, it need be, but not our national honor. No matter who has been to blame for the present monetary chaos -- the Government, foreign nations, individual peculators, extortioners of every class and of every hue -- the "promise to pay" must be redeemed at any cost. We have sworn to our hu[???]t, but we cannot and will not change. No matter who is to profit by the resumption of a proper basis for our business transactions -- no matter who is to suffer -- that basis must be established once for all, firmly and honorably. We may disregard the opinion of the outside world as to the merits of our cause; we may care nothing for sentimental sympathy with our Anglo-Saxon heroism, or sentimental aversion to our social system; but at one point we do well to be sensitive -- our word must be as good as the word of any merchant on 'Change, of any financier on the Bourse. True, we are cut off from the rest of mankind, our debt is a family affair, but if we were shut out forever from foreign intercourse, we could not afford to despise ourselves and one another.

[Homer_J_Simpson]

Free Republic University, Department of History presents U.S. History, 1861-1865: Seminar and Discussion Forum
The American Civil War, as seen through news reports of the time and later historical accounts

First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: May 2025.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.

Posting history, in reverse order

https://www.freerepublic.com/tag/by:homerjsimpson/index?tab=articles

To add this class to or drop it from your schedule notify Admissions and Records (Attn: Homer_J_Simpson) by reply or freepmail.

Link to previous New York Times thread

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/4205719/posts

[Homer_J_Simpson]

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[Homer_J_Simpson]

Southern News: The Collapse of the Confederate Finances – 2-3
The Army of the Potomac: The New Arrangements for Sutlers Satisfactory – 3-4
From Washington: Special Dispatches to the N.Y. Times – 4
Scientific: Polytechnic Association of the American Institute – 4-5
Editorial: How We and the Rebels Propose to Keep Up Our Armies – A Contrast – 5-6
The Sutler System – 6
Bragg’s Successors – 6
Christmas – 6
Decidedly True – 6
Amusements this Evening – 6
The Merry Christmas: Some of the Observations and Enjoyments – 6

[LS]

Having written my Ph.D. dissertation in part on southern banking (I didn’t do Confederate financing of the Civil War, but had to research it), one of the stupidest decisions ever made by any government was when the Confederacy backed its money with cotton, then embargoed the sale of cotton.

The first wasn’t going to work well, but the second ensured the Confederate treasury would collapse.

Richard Bensel (”Yankee Leviathan”) compared over 150 separate laws and acts of government in the Union and Confederacy, and found that the Confederacy was far more “tyrannical” than Lincoln’s government in terms of private property seizure, confiscation of all types, the draft, shutting down newspapers and arresting offenders, socializing the iron and salt industries, and so on. His conclusions excluded slavery from discussions of violations of personal liberty. When the South confiscated all Union gold, that was all the gold they ever got for the rest of the war.

[BroJoeK]

"When the South confiscated all Union gold, that was all the gold they ever got for the rest of the war."

I've seen three stories of Confederate efforts to add gold to their treasury by stealing it, all from later in the war, none successful.

1. In California there was Captain Ingram's Partisan Rangers and the Mason Henry Gang.

2. In Colorado there was the "Reynolds Gang".

3. In Vermont, in the only official operation of the type that I know of, CSA Lt. Bennett H. Young organized 21 Confederates in Canada for a bank heist in St. Albans, October 1864, which yielded $88,000 -- maybe $3 million in today's values.
   Young's raiders were captured and released, but the $88,000 was returned to its owners in Vermont.

The only successful efforts I know of were Confederate commerce raiders, about 20 ships, reported to have seized or sunk hundreds of Union commercial ships.
How much money did they deliver to the Confederate treasury?
I've seen no numbers on that, but after the war the US government sued Great Britain for $2 billion in damages caused by British built Confederate commerce raiders like the CSS Alabama, Florida and Shenandoah.

The suit was settled in 1871, through arbitration, for $15.5 million, maybe $5 billion in today's equivalents.

But how much, if any, stolen gold was delivered to the Confederate treasury during the war, that I can't find.

[nuke_road_warrior]

So Jeff Davis was Biden's role model for economic policy?