It has drawn little from taxes or forfeiture, although it
has been aided by the appropriation of both public and private property
of the United States.
We have no record of the currency issued, but we know that both prices
and pay have been higher in Southern than in Northern armies; and if
with us it has cost a thousand dollars per annum to sustain a soldier in
the field, it has cost at that rate four hundred and sixty-seven
millions to maintain three hundred and fifty thousand men for the last
sixteen months in the Southern army, and of this at least four hundred
millions has been met by the issue of paper.
Such an issue would be equivalent to an issue of seven times that
amount, or of twenty-eight hundred millions, to be borne by the whites
who now recognize the Union. How long can the South continue to float
such a currency? Does it not already equal or exceed the paper currency
of our Revolution, which became utterly worthless, notwithstanding our
nation achieved its independence?
Our fathers, long before the surrender at Yorktown, resorted to specie,
to the bank of Morris, and to French and Dutch subsidies: but how is the
South to command bank-notes or specie, or to buy arms, powder, or
provisions, or to satisfy soldiers with a currency such as has been
described, or to make new issues at the rate of twenty-five millions per
month?
At Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, gold ranges from 125 to 150
per cent.
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