--From speeches in the Federal Congress and one of the official letters of the
Federal Secretary of the Treasury, we learn the following facts in regard to the
Federal expenditures:
Regular appropriations called for for the year 1861-2 by Secretary Cobb | $68,363,726 |
Appropriated at the session of July, 1861, for war expenditures then incurred, to be paid in the fiscal year 1861-2 | 318,000,000 |
Appropriation now called for to meet expenses not embraced in the deficiency appropriated in July | 214,000,000 |
Called for by Secretary Chase for the year 1862-3 | 475,331,245 |
Called for by Secretary Cameron for coast defences | 4,710,000 |
| $1,080,404,971 |
These are the figures furnished by official documents for the two years commencing first July, 1861, and ending 30th June, 1863. They embrace the expenditures of the
Government for a period of two years, together with those of half of April, and May, and June 1861, the first months of the war. Of the period thus covered, only the expenses of about six months are definitely ascertained; those of the residue of the time being conjectural and estimated.
The actual expenditures of the six months for which they are ascertained, exceeded the estimates submitted to Congress in July, $214,000,000. At the same ratio of excess, the real expenditures for the next eighteen months of the period estimated for, will require additional appropriations to supply deficiencies, of six hundred and forty millions; and the aggregate shown by the above table will be swollen to seventeen hundred and twenty millions.
It would be a very moderate computation to assume that the actual expenditures for the two years, estimated at ten hundred and eighty millions, will be from twelve hundred and fifty to fifteen hundred millions or more than six hundred millions a year.
Thus, the expenses of the
Federal Government are at the rate of sixty millions of dollars a month, or two millions of dollars a day. Considering that this expenditure is disbursed almost wholly within the
Northern States, whose population is twenty millions, the average amount of money which is thus paid the
Northern people by their Government in purchase of their support to itself and its measures are nearly fifty dollars to each man, woman, and child, per annum; which is the largest capitation expenditure ever yet recorded in the annals of finance.
This enormous amount of expenditure, were it not officially disclosed, would seem incredible; and it reveals the most stupendous system of largesses disbursed to a corruptible, money-loving people, for supporting an unholy measure, which the history of mankind affords.
These official statements remove all doubt as to the means by which the public sentiment of the
North, a large portion of which was once so strongly in favor of justice to the
South, and so violently hostile to measures of coercion, has been wholly changed.
It can no longer be a matter of conjecture why
Vallandigham,
Pierce, and Bright, are the solitary voices among twenty millions to refuse their sanction to this war; it can no longer be necessary to surmise why so sudden a change was wrought in the sentiments of such fierce fire-eaters as Dallan,
Cushing, and
Picayune Butler; it can no longer admit of conjecture why such time corverane
Buchanan,
Fillmore,
Everett, and
Cass, hoary and grizzled worshippers of the seven principles of the loaves and fishes, became such zealous advocates of the
Union, right or wrong.
The fact that six hundred millions of dollars per annum are expended in the prosecution of this war, coupled as it is with the sudden conversion from bitter opponents of the war into its rantipole advocates, of at least half of the
Northern people, displays a corruption more stupendous and more infamous than the records of human baseness can parallel.
The original opponents at the
North of the war, have not only repudiated principles which they had professed for a lifetime; they have not only formed an unholy coalition with men whose creed they had always held in righteous abhorrence, but they have for filthy lucre, for thirty or forty-piece of silver, sold their country, and consented to carry whole-sale murder and destruction to the hearthstones of their fellow-citizens.
If in this world an offended
Providence makes sure to visit retribution upon nations for their offences; then, as surely as such a Providence reigns supreme, the present generation will not pass away before the offending section in this war is visited by calamities compared with which those brought upon
Egypt were light and harmless.