No, the confederate currency plumeted because it was worthless. There was nothing of value to back it up. Dorie Goodwad wrings his hands over the ratio of debt to receipts in the Union ledger, the picture down south was even bleaker. The confederacy had no revenue to speak of. No imports, so no tariffs. No tax receipts in hard currency. The only hard currency it had at all was that U.S. currency that it seized from banks and mints when secession started. It was unable to borrow, other than a small loan in 1861 and an even smaller one in 1863 backed by a future cotton crop. So you have, at best $18 million in hard currency loans the first two years. Against that you issue over $700 million in paper currency. You issue another 700 million or so by the end of the war. So there is no surprise that the confederacy currency was worthless, and it had nothing to do with Yankee manipulation. It was worthless because there was nothing to back it with and there was too much of it out there.
The Federal debt in the war was an order of magnitude larger than the Confederate debt. Could that be a consequence of the Northern (more centralized) banking policy? Or merely a result of having an immensely larger army and war policy?
It depends. If you consider the confederate currency as debt then one could say the confederacy issued about a billion and a half dollars in debt against maybe 18 million in revenues through the course of the war. That's over 90 dollars in debt for every dollar in other reveunue, as opposed to the union ratio of roughly 5 or 6 dollars of debt for each dollar of other revenue. How can that financial picture be better than the one facing the United States?
Are all of these soldiers counted here voluntary? Or were they conscripted by the invading Northern army? (I'm not very intimately familiar with the military side of the Civil War at this point, I admittedly have quite a bit of work left to do to bring my understanding of those affairs up to par. Please forgive me for asking these questions out of such supreme ignorance, but they're the first questions that come to mind in reading the prior statement.)
Conscription in the North was limited to white soldiers and was a dismal failure. Somewhat less than 10% of all Union soldiers in the last year of the war were conscripts. Contrast that with the confederacy where somewhere between one third and one quarter of all troops were conscripts, and most of the rest had had their enlistments involuntarily extended for the duration of the war in April 1862.
Perhaps so, though I'll check the references sent by LS to confirm the numbers. You definitely put forth a very worthy argument, NS. Thank you for that consideration!
It depends. If you consider the confederate currency as debt then one could say the confederacy issued about a billion and a half dollars in debt against maybe 18 million in revenues through the course of the war.
Is that a fair comparison? Was the United States currency considered a debt? I was merely alluding to the national debt, in numeric dollars, listed at the end of the war.
That's over 90 dollars in debt for every dollar in other reveunue, as opposed to the union ratio of roughly 5 or 6 dollars of debt for each dollar of other revenue. How can that financial picture be better than the one facing the United States?
A good question, and I'll be sure to consider it when I weigh the evidence. Thank you again!
Conscription in the North was limited to white soldiers and was a dismal failure. Somewhat less than 10% of all Union soldiers in the last year of the war were conscripts. Contrast that with the confederacy where somewhere between one third and one quarter of all troops were conscripts, and most of the rest had had their enlistments involuntarily extended for the duration of the war in April 1862.
1/3 to 1/4 of the Confederate army being conscripts is significant, yes, though I'd be curious to see what percentage of each army was made up of non-Americans (i.e., foreigners). The Federal army was something like double the size of the Confederate by the close of the war, but from the accounts I've seen, this was largely made up of Europeans, not Americans.
Thank you for your addition to this argument, good sir,
Regards,
~dt~