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.

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[420] dollars. The circulation of the Bank of England, we have seen, did not exceed, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, one hundred and fifty millions of dollars, which is not one-sixth of the amount of the circulation which the war left in the North. The price of gold in New York, compared with greenbacks, for several months after the close of the war fluctuated near the point of one for one and forty-five hundredths; while the maximum depreciation of paper, during the war, was two and eighty-five hundredths. The maximum depreciation of the pound sterling note in England was one and fifty-five hundredths.

The total cost of the war to the Confederate government had reached at its close, according to the opinion of intelligent officers of the Treasury, about thirty-five hundred millions of dollars. Of this total about twenty-five hundred millions consisted of eight, seven, six, and four per cent. bonds of long dates; of Treasury notes outstanding of both the old and new issue; of unsettled accounts due from government, audited or in the process of being audited in the accounting departments; and of debt that had been cancelled in the form of the old currency, and income received in the form of taxes. The residue of the expenditure remained in the form of unpaid claims against Government in the hands of the people, for property purchased or impressed and damages sustained from the army, in fact, the cost of the war on the Confederate side, measured in Confederate currency, was nearly the same as that on the Federal side; for it i; to be observed that the three thousand millions of dollars at which the Federal debt is generally estimated, embraces only the Federal debt proper; and does not embrace the expenditures made by States, cities, counties, and corporations generally. An intelligent authority classifies the war debt of the North as follows: Federal debt, three thousand millions; State debt one hundred and thirty-five millions; city debt, one hundred millions; and county debt five hundred millions; making a grand aggregate of about three thousand seven hundred and fifty millions of dollars. The municipal indebtedness of the South, incurred on account of the war, was very inconsiderable. The complete disorganization which attended the disastrous termination of the struggle renders it impossible to arrive at an exact knowledge as yet either of the Confederate debt or of the municipal debt; but the latter was comparatively so inconsiderable as to constitute scarcely an appreciable element in the grand total of the Confederate finances. The system of bounties was wholly unknown at the South; a patriotic public opinion and an energetic conscription sufficing to force every man of self-respect into the army, or into some branch of the public service. The bounty system, with its frauds and corruptions, was a feature of the war known only to the North.

We come now to speak more exclusively of the course of finance in the Southern States. Early in the winter of the first year of the war, and