DOLLARS, CENTS, AND LESS.
And now, looking back to the struggling and suffering South, one asks
with wonder how these results could have transpired.
Unlike the North, the South went into the struggle with her whole soul
and her whole strength. Every man came forward with one accord, willing
to work in the way he best might for the cause he held sacred; ready to
give his arm, his life, and all he had beside, for the general good.
Whole regiments were put into service, armed, uniformed and equipped,
without costing the central government one dollar; and in some
instances--as of that spotless knight, true gentleman and pure patriot,
Wade Hampton--raised by the energy, paid for by the generosity, and led
to death itself by the valor of one man!
Corporations came into this general feeling. Railroads put their
rolling-stock and their power in the hands of the Government; agreeing,
as early as the origin of the Montgomery government, to take their pay
at _half rates_ and in government bonds. Banks put their facilities and
their circulation, manufacturers their machinery and foundries their
material, at public disposition, for the bare cost of existence.
Farmers and graziers cheerfully yielded all demanded of them! And how
the women wrought--how soft hands that had never worked before plied
the ceaseless needle through the tough fabric--how taper fingers packed
the boxes for camp, full from self-denial at home--shall shine down all
history as the brightest page in story of noble selflessness.
In the deadly hail of hostile batteries; in the sweltering
harvest-field of August, and at the saddened and desolate fireside of
December, the southern people wrought on--hoped on!
And the result of all this willing sacrifice was greatly to reduce the
burdens on the treasury. For reasons before stated the southern army
was smaller, and its transportation cost far less, than that of the
enemy. Its equipment was far cheaper, and its subsistence for every
reason infinitely smaller.
Still, with an outlay per diem scarcely more than one-tenth that of the
North--which amounted to near $4,000,000! daily; with the teeming
fields and bursting warehouses filled with cotton--a year back,
auriferous in every fiber--worthless now; and with a people thus united
to act and to aid it, the Southern Treasury continued to flood the
country with paper issues, based only on the silver lining of the cloud
that hung darker and ever darker over the South.
With _one-tenth_ the population in the field and the rest working
for them, there was no real demand for this inordinate issue. One-tenth
the volume of currency properly distributed, with a coincident issue of
bonds, would have relieved the actual necessities of buyer and seller.
But still the wheels worked on--still Treasury notes fluttered out,
until every bank and store and till was glutted with them.
Then the results of the inflation came with relentless and rapid pace.
With the people still convinced of the inevitable outcome of their
united efforts; with the thinkers of the South still evolving their
theories of the philosopher's stone to change all this mass of paper
into gold; and with the press of the country blatant about the speedy
and certain collapse of northern credit; above all, with millions of
pounds of cotton rotting in our warehouses--Confederate money, little
by little, bought less and less of the necessaries of life.
At first the change was very gradual. In the summer of 1861, persons
coming to Richmond from Europe and the North spent their gold as freely
as the Treasury notes. Then gold rose to five, ten, fifteen, and
finally to forty per cent. premium. There it stuck for a time. But the
issues increased in volume, the blockade grew more effective, and
misgivings about the Treasury management crept into the minds of the
people. Gold went up again, ten per cent. at a jump, until it touched a
hundred--then rapidly to a hundred and fifty.
"The whole system looks devilish blue," said Styles Staple, who was
curing an ugly wound in his thigh. "I've been writing 'the house' about
it, and the Gov. thinks the hour has passed for utilizing the cotton.
If that can't be impressed by the Government, the whole bottom will
fall out of this thing before many months."
"If it ever passes the two hundred," solemnly quoth the colonel in
answer, "egad, sir! 'twill go up like a rocket! Up, sir! egad! clean
out of sight!"
I candidly answered that I could not see the end of the inflation.
"I do," Styles growled--"Repudiation!"
"Well, that's no end of a nobby thing!" cried Will Wyatt, who was
always bored about anything more serious than the last book, or
charging a battery. "Cheerful that, for a fellow's little pile to go up
like a rocket, and he not even to get the stick."
"He can have the smoke, however," answered Styles more cheerily, as he
hobbled over and gave a $5 note for a dozen cigars.
And this began rapidly to be the tone, everywhere out of trade. A vague
feeling of insecurity about the power of the Government to check the
onward flood of issue prevailed in all classes. This produced a
reckless expenditure for anything tangible and portable. And at last
the colonel's prediction was verified; for money touched the two
hundred per cent., and went up--up--by the one hundred; until in a time
incredibly short--and with such a suddenness that people had no time to
be surprised--the Confederate treasury note stood still for a moment,
worth _twenty to one_ for _gold_!
This may be accounted for, in small part, by the scarcity of supplies
and the increasing efficiency of the blockade. But it must be
remembered that the value of gold remained a constant quantity and the
gold dollar in Richmond, note-flooded and blockade-bound, _bought
more_ of almost any article than it ever had before.
With a string of active vessels watching every port and cove, to snap
up the daring ventures between the island ports and the coast; with a
powerful enemy thundering at every point of entrance to southern
territory, still the fortunate man who had gold, or who could draw upon
Europe, or the North, actually lived much cheaper than in any place
beyond the lines! Singular as this statement may appear, it is actual
fact. At this moment--before the depreciation of currency became such
as to give it no value whatever--board at the best hotels in Richmond
was $20 per day--equivalent to $1 in gold, while it was $3 in New York,
or Washington; a suit of clothes could be had for $600 or $30 in gold,
while in New York it cost from $60 to $80; the best whisky was $25 per
gallon--$1.25 in gold, while in the North it was more than double.
Rapidly gold rose in the market, and in the absence of stocks became
the only vehicle for financial gambling. From time to time, as a
brilliant success would grace Confederate arms, the fall of Treasury
credit would be checked. But it was only for the moment--and it went
down steadily, rapidly, fatally. And as steadily, as rapidly and as
fatally did the Treasury shuttles fly; spinning out the notes, like a
whirlwind in autumn. And tighter grew the blockade, and fewer the means
of supply. Stocks on hand were long since gone; little came to replace
them, and the rich were driven to great straits to live, while the poor
almost starved.
Away from the army lines and great centers of cities, the suffering was
dreadful; impressments stripped the impoverished people; conscription
turned smiling fields into desert wastes; fire and sword ravaged many
districts; and the few who could raise the great bundle of paper
necessary to buy a meal, scarce knew where to turn in the general
desolation, to procure it even then. In the cities, it was a little
better; but when beef, pork and butter in Richmond reached $35 per
pound; when common cloth was $60 per yard, shoes $200 to $800 per pair,
and a barrel of flour worth $1,400, it became a difficult problem to
fill one's stomach at any outlay.
And all this time the soldiers and Government employes were being paid
on a gold basis. The private received _eleven_ (afterward twenty-one)
dollars per month--amounting at the end of 1863 to just _fifty-five
cents in coin_! At the last payments, before the final actions at
Petersburg, the pay of a private for one month was _thirty-three
cents_!
Nor were officers of the army and navy better paid. With their rank in
the old service guaranteed them, they also received about the same pay,
when gold and paper money were of equal value. Later Congress believed
it would be a derogation from its dignity to "practically reduce the
value of its issues," as one member said, "by raising officers' pay."
Thus a lieutenant in the navy, probably of twenty years' experience,
and with a family dependent upon him, though debarred from all other
labor, received $1,500 per year--equal in gold to the sum of $4.25 per
month; while a brigadier, or other higher general, received nearly $8
per month.
These things would provoke a smile, did they not bring with them the
memory of the anguished struggle to fight off want that the wives and
children of the soldier martyrs made. I have gone into detail further
than space, or the reader's patience may warrant; and still, "Behold,
the half is not told!"
I would not, if I could, record the bitter miseries of the last
dreadful winter--paint the gaunt and ugly outlines of womanhood,
squalid, famished, dying--but triumphant still. One case only will tell
the tale for all the rest. A poor, fragile creature, still girlish and
refined under the pinched and pallid features of starvation, tottered
to me one day to beg work.
"It is life or death for me and four young children," she said. "We
have eaten nothing to-day; and all last week we lived on _three pints
of rice!_"
Will Wyatt, who was near, made a generous offer of relief. Tears sprang
into the woman's eyes as she answered, "You mean kindness, major; but I
have never asked charity yet. My husband is at the front; and I only
ask a right--to be allowed to work for my children!"
Such were the sufferings, such the spirit of southern women!
When it was too late--when the headlong road to ruin had been more than
half-way run--some feeble attempts were made to stay the downward rush.
Of course, they were useless--worse than useless, in that they made
widespread a feeling of distrust, already deep-seated with reflecting
men. The volume of currency had reached such expansion that its value
was merely nominal for purposes of subsistence, when the devices of Mr.
Memminger to lessen it began to be pressed in earnest.
The people had now begun to see that the whole theory of the Treasury
was false; that the moment for utilizing the cotton supply had indeed
been lost; and they murmured loud and deep against the Secretary and
the President; whom they believed not only retained him in office, but
endorsed his destructive policy. Mr. Davis, the people said, was
autocratic with his Cabinet, and would have displaced Mr. Memminger
summarily, had he not favored that peculiar financial system. Mr.
Davis, too, was known to have been hostile to the absorption and
exportation by the Government of all the cotton. He had, moreover,
recommended against any legislation by Congress to contract the
currency and stop the issues. Now, therefore, the inflation and utter
inadequacy of the paper money was laid at his door, as well as Mr.
Memminger's; and the people, feeling there was no safety for them,
began to distrust the good faith of such reckless issue. A system of
barter was inaugurated among the country people; and they traded off
things only needful for others absolutely essential. They began to feel
a dread of taking the notes of the Government, and in many instances
refused them utterly. And yet these very people yielded cheerfully to
the constantly insolent, and not infrequently illegal, demands of the
impressment officers.
In the cities, too, a point had been reached where the promise of the
Government to pay was looked upon as a bitter joke. Bonds were
constantly refused in business transactions, and only Treasury
notes--as a medium of temporary exchange--were accepted.
Then, as a necessary measure, came the imperative order for funding the
currency. All the millions of old issues were to be turned into the
treasury, by a certain date, and exchanged for bonds. If the unlucky
holder could not, or would not, deposit or exchange, he lost
thirty-three per cent. of the value of the Government pledge he held.
The old issues went rapidly out of sight; but the measure did not
appreciably lessen the current medium, while it _did_ very appreciably
lessen the confidence in the integrity of the Department.
It is but the first step in repudiation, thought the people. If
Government will on any pretext ignore one-third of its obligation, what
guarantee have we for the other two? And so, justly or unjustly, the
country lost all faith in the money. Men became reckless and paid any
price for any article that would keep. Tobacco--as being the most
compact and portable--was the favorite investment; but cotton, real
estate, merchandise--anything but the paper money, was grasped at with
avidity.
It has often been charged that speculators ruined the currency. But, to
give the children of the devil their due--we can scarcely think but
that the currency made the speculators.
Had the plain system been adopted, by which the currency dollar could
have ever approximated to coin, it would have been simply impossible
for the holders of supplies to have run prices up to extortionate
figures. Not that I would for one instant excuse, or ask any mercy for,
those unclean vultures who preyed upon the dead credit of their
Government; who grew fat and loathsome while they battened on the
miseries of the brave, true men who battled for them in the front ranks
of the fight. But while the fault and the shame is theirs, it may not
be disguised that the door was not only left open for their base
plundering, but in many cases they were urged toward it by the very
hands that should have slammed it in their faces.
When we come to consider the question of the blockade, we may, perhaps,
see this more clearly. Meantime, in glancing down the past by the light
of experience, one can not but marvel at the rapid, yet almost
imperceptible, epidemic that fastened incurably upon the people,
spreading to all classes and sapping the very foundations of their
strength.
In the beginning, as vast crowds poured into Richmond--each man with a
little money and anxious to use it to some advantage--trade put on a
new and holiday dress. Old shops were spruced up; old stocks, by aid of
brushing and additions, were made to appear quite salable and rapidly
ran off. The demand made the meat it fed upon, until stores, shops and
booths sprang up in all parts of the city and on all the roads leading
into it from the camps. Gradually--from causes already noted--supplies
became more scarce as money became more plenty. The pinch began to be
felt by many who had never known it before; and almost every one, who
had any surplus portables, was willing to turn them into money. In this
way, those who had anything to sell, for the time, managed to live. But
the unfortunates who had only what they needed absolutely, or who were
forced to live upon a fixed stipend, that did not increase in any ratio
to the decrease of money, suffered terribly.
These were only too ready to take the fever of speculation; and to buy
any small lots of anything whatever that might sell again at a profit.
This was the class from which the main body of amateur speculators was
recruited. One successful venture led to another and gave added means
for it. The clerk, or the soldier, who yesterday cleared his hundred on
a little turn in whisky, to-morrow might hope to double it--then
reinvest his principal and his profits. It was marvelous how values
rose over night. One might buy anything, a lot of flour--a line of
fruits--a hogshead of molasses, or a case of boots to-day, with almost
a certainty of nearly doubling his outlay to-day week.
The ordinary channels of trade became clogged and blocked by its
constant increase. Auction houses became the means of brokerage; and
their number increased to such an extent that half a dozen red flags at
last dotted every block on Main street. And incongruous, indeed, were
the mixtures exposed at these sales, as well as in the windows of the
smallest shops in Richmond. In the latter, bonnets rested on the sturdy
legs of cavalry boots; rolls of ribbon were festooned along the crossed
barrel of a rifle and the dingy cotton umbrella; while cartridges,
loaves of bread, packages of groceries, gloves, letter paper, packs of
cards, prayer-books and canteens, jostled each other in admirable
confusion.
At these auctions there was utter want of system. Hogsheads of prime
rum would be put up after kegs of spikes; a case of organdies would
follow a good cavalry horse; and then might come four second-hand
feather-beds and a hundred boarding cutlasses.
But everything soever found a purchaser; some because they were
absolutely needed and the buyer dreaded waiting the next week's rise;
the majority to sell again in this insane game of money-making.
But varied as were the motives for speculation, the principal ones were
breadstuffs and absolute necessities of life; and while the minor
speculators--the amateurs--purchased for _quick_ profits--the
professional vultures bought for _great_ ones and could afford to wait.
The first class reached into every rank of society; the second were
principally Yankee residents--caught in Richmond by the war, or
remaining for the sole purpose of making it pay--and a smaller class of
the lowest Polish Jews. Ishmaels both, owning no kinship and no
country, their sole hope was gain--gain at the cost of reputation and
credit themselves--gain even at the cost of torture and starvation to
the whole South beside. These it was who could afford to buy in bulk;
then aid the rise they knew must come inexorably, by hoarding up great
quantities of flour, bacon, beef and salt.
It mattered not for themselves who suffered--who starved. It mattered
not if the noble fellows at the front lived on a scant handful of
cornmeal per day--if starving men died before the works they were too
weak to mount--if ghastly objects in hospital and trench literally
perished, while their storehouses burst with food--waiting for a rise!
It is too ugly a picture to dwell upon. Suffice it that the human
hyenas of speculation did prey upon the dying South; that they locked
up her salt while the men in the trenches perished for it; that thrice
they stored the flour the people felt was theirs, in such quantities
and for so long, that before their maw for gain was glutted, serious
riots of the starving called for the strong hand to interfere. And to
the credit of Government and southern soldier, be it said--even in that
dark hour, with craving stomach and sickening soul--"Johnny Reb" obeyed
his orders and guarded the den of the hyena--from his own hungering
children, perhaps!
No weak words of mine may paint the baseness and infamy of the vultures
of the market. Only a Dore, with a picture like his Frozen Hell, or
Ugolino--might give it faint ideal.
And with the feeling how valueless was the money, came another
epidemic--not so widespread, perhaps, as the speculation fever; but
equally fatal to those who caught it--the rage for gambling!
Impulsive by nature, living in an atmosphere of constant and increasing
artificial excitement, feeling that the money worth little to-day,
perhaps, would be worth nothing to-morrow--the men of the South gambled
heavily, recklessly and openly. There was no shame--little concealment
about it. The money was theirs, they argued, and mighty hardly earned,
too. They were cut off from home ties and home amusements; led the life
of dumb beasts in camp; and, when they came to town--ho! for "the
tiger."
Whether these reasons be valid or not, such they were. And really to
the camp-wearied and battle-worn officer, the saloon of the fashionable
Richmond "hell" was a thing of beauty. Its luxurious furniture, soft
lights, obsequious servants and lavish store of such wines and liquors
and cigars as could be had nowhere else in Dixie--these were only part
of the inducement. Excitement did the rest, leaving out utterly the
vulgar one of possible gain, so rarely did that obtain. But in these
faro-banks collected the leading men, resident and alien, of the
Capital. Senators, soldiers and the learned professions sat elbow to
elbow, round the generous table that offered choicest viands money
could procure. In the handsome rooms above they puffed fragrant and
real Havanas, while the latest developments of news, strategy and
policy were discussed; sometimes ably, sometimes flippantly, but always
freshly. Here men who had been riding raids in the mountains of the
West; had lain shut up in the water batteries of the Mississippi; or
had faced the advance of the many "On-to-Richmonds"--met after long
separation. Here the wondering young cadet would look first upon some
noted raider, or some gallant brigadier--cool and invincible amid the
rattle of Minie-balls, as reckless but conquerable amid the rattle of
ivory chips.
So the faro-banks flourished and the gamblers waxed fat like Jeshurun,
the ass, and kicked never so boldly at the conscript man. Nor were they
all of ignoble memory. There is more than one "sport" in the South
to-day, who made warm and real friends of high position from his acts
of real generosity then.
Whatever may be the vices of gamblers as a class, many a soldier-boy
will bear witness to the exception that proves the rule. One of the
"hells" at least was a _home_ for the refugee; and whether the
Maryland soldier came dirty, and hungry and ragged from camp, with
never a "stamp" in his pocket; whether he came wearied and worn, but
"full of greenbacks," from a trip across the lines--the post of honor
at the table, the most cordial welcome and most generous glass of wine
were ever his.
However the holy may be horrified--however the princely speculator may
turn up his keen-scented nose, I here record that, during the four
years of dark and bloody war--of pinching want and bitter trial, there
was no more generous, free-hearted and delicate aid given to the
suffering soldier-boy, than came from the hand of the Baltimore
faro-banker.
So in Richmond high and low gambled--some lightly for excitement's
sake--some dashingly and brilliantly--a few sullenly and doggedly going
in to gain. Few got badly hurt, getting more in equivalent of wines,
cigars and jolly dinners than they gave. They looked upon the "hell" as
a club--and as such used it freely, spending what they had and
whistling over their losses. When they had money to spare they played;
when they had no money to spare--or otherwise--they smoked their
cigars, drank their toddies and met their friends in chaff and gossip,
with no more idea that there was a moral or social wrong than if they
had been at the "Manhattan" or the "Pickwick" of to-day.
I do not pretend to defend the habit; but such it was, and such all the
men who remember the Capital will recognize it.
Of that other class, who "went in for blood"--some got badly hurt in
reputation and in pocket. But the dead cause has buried its dead; and
their errors--the result of an overstrained state of society and
indubitably of a false money-system--hurt no one but themselves.
And so, with the enemy thundering at the gates; with the echoed
_whoo!_ of the great shells almost sounding in the streets; and
with the ill-provided army staggering under the burthen of
defense--almost too heavy for it to bear--the finances of the
Confederacy went from bad to worse--to nothing!
The cotton that the alchemy of genius, or even of business tact--might
have transmuted into gold, rotted useless; or worse, as a bait for the
raider. The notes, that might have been a worthy pledge of governmental
faith, bore no meaning now upon their face; and the soldier in the
trench and the family at the desolate fireside--who might have been
comfortably fed and clad--were gnawed with very hunger! And when the
people murmured too loudly, a change was made in men, if not in policy.
Even if Mr. Trenholm had the ability, he had no opportunity to prove
it. The evil seed had been sown and the bitter fruit had grown apace.
Confederate credit was dead!
Even its own people had no more faith in the issues of their
government; and they hesitated not--even while they groped on, ever on
to the darkness coming faster and faster down upon them--to declare
that the cause of their trouble was Mr. Memminger; with the President
behind him.
But, though the people saw the mismanagement and felt its cause--though
they suffered from it as never nation suffered before--though they
spoke always bitterly and often hotly of it; still, in their greatest
straits and in their darkest hours, no southern man ever deemed it but
mismanagement.
The wildest and most reckless slanderer could never hint that one shred
of all the flood of paper was ever diverted from its proper channel by
the Secretary; or that he had not worked brain and body to the utmost,
in the unequal struggle to subdue the monster he had created.