[650]
Seventh.--That the transportation was not now adequate, from whatever cause, to meet the necessary demands of the service.
Eighth.--That the supply of fresh meat to Gen. Lee's army was precarious, and if the army fell back from Richmond and Petersburg, there was every probability that it would cease altogether.
To meet these great necessities, nothing was done by the
Government beyond a visionary scheme enacted in the last days of Congress, to raise three millions in specie to purchase supplies from those producers of the
Confederacy, who were no longer willing to take scrip for their commodities.
Probably a tithe of the sum was raised, and the paltry scheme actually executed in a few of the
Western counties of
Virginia.
The condition of the currency.
In 1864, the Confederate Government had given the finishing blow to the currency.
By the end of 1863, the policy of paying off all debts and making all purchases with money manufactured for the purpose as needed, had swollen the volume of the currency to more than six hundred millions of dollars.
If we recollect that, before the war, fifty millions of bank notes, and twenty millions of specie, had sufficed for the currency of eleven States; and observe that about one-third of the area of these States was, in the beginning of 1864, under the control of the invader, we can apprehend how excessively redundant a circulation exceeding six hundred millions of dollars must have proved to be in the restricted territory remaining under the
Confederate sway.
Legislation was deemed to be absolutely necessary to bring down the bulk of this circulation, and to give greater value to the paper dollar.
Accordingly, on the 17th February, 1864, an act of Congress was passed of a very sweeping character.
The design of the law was, to call in from circulation, the whole outstanding six hundred millions of paper money; and to substitute for the old a new issue of greatly enhanced value.
Its provisions were well calculated to effect this object.
It provided that until the 1st day of April next succeeding the passage of the law, east of the
Mississippi, and the 1st day of July west of this river, the holders of the outstanding currency above the denomination of five dollars, should be at liberty to exchange the same at par for four per cent. bonds of the government; which bonds should be receivable in the payment of all Confederate taxes.
The law, however, did not exempt these bonds from taxation.
It further provided that after the period first specified, this liberty of funding at par should cease, and that the entire body of the currency, except notes under the denomination of five dollars, should cease to be current, and should be exchangeable for the notes of a
