Edward Alfred Pollard, The lost cause; a new Southern history of the War of the Confederates ... Drawn from official sources and approved by the most distinguished Confederate leaders.

---

[418] forty-two thousand millions of francs (in the aggregate of Assignas and Mandates, and continued to decline in value until the whole mass of circulation became utterly valueless. The volume of currency in England, on the other hand, never reached an unmanageable aggregate. The circulating notes of the Bank of England never aggregated quite thirty millions of pounds sterling, or one hundred and fifty millions of dollars Nor did the pound sterling, in proper form, ever experience a depreciation comparable with that which has generally attended the excessive issue of paper currency, during a state of war, in other countries; for the pound sterling note of England reached its maximum depreciation in 1814, when it sank to the value of £5 10s. to the ounce, or about 1.55 to the unit in gold. We shall see that in the United States, during the war, the greenback dollar sank to the value of 2.85 for one in gold; and that the Confederate paper dollar sank at the end, to the low value of 60 for one.

During the protracted wars which the Russian Empire prosecuted for a long series of years upon its Circassian frontier, a large employment of credit was found to be requisite. An expedient similar to that employed by Great Britain was resorted to, in the establishment of an institution called the Bank of Assignats. This establishment furnished the proper currency of the Empire for many years, and its circulation is believed never to have exceeded in periods of the most pressing military exigency more than eight hundred and thirty-six millions of roubles. A most remarkable circumstance connected with the history of this circulation is, that it underwent a most excessive appreciation, above gold in value, during the winter of Napoleon's Russian campaign, rising in value as the invader approached the heart of the country, and receding as he retired.

Unfortunately for themselves, neither of the two belligerents in America took any measures for establishing a proper relation between the efflux and reflux of the currency, during the gigantic war which we have under consideration. If a Bank of Exchequer had been established at the beginning, endowed with functions like those exercised by the Bank of England during the first two decades of the present century, having entire control of the circulation, and acting as the principal factor of the government in the negotiation of its bonds, the evils of a ruinously depreciated currency might have been avoided. As it was, each new demand of the government for money, instead of being supplied by the sale of bonds, and the receipt of a part of the circulation already outstanding, was met by a new and additional issue of notes; those previously issued still remaining, for the most part not needed and not employed, in the hands of the public. There was thus a perpetual efflux of notes of circulation; and no returning influx, to keep up an active demand for them and to sustain their value. The public credit was made the prey of a multitude of sharpers and brokers, who could all have been kept in due subordination by a great banking