Of the dead king standing there;
For his beard was so white and his eyes so cold,
They left him alone with his crown of gold!"
Had the Government bought—as was urged upon it in the fall of '61—all the cotton in the country, at the then prices, and paid for it in Confederate bonds at six per cent., that cotton—according to calculations of the best cotton men of the South—would have produced in Liverpool, during the next three years, at rapidly-increasing prices, over one thousand millions of dollars in gold! Granting this erroneous, even by one-half, it follows that the immense specie balance thus held, would—after paying all accruing interest—have left such a surplus as to have kept the currency issue of Confederate States' notes merely nominal, and even then have held them at a par valuation.
The soldier, who freely bared his breast to the shock of a hundred battles for his country, his fireside and his little ones, could then have sent his pittance of eleven dollars a month to that fireside, with the consciousness it might buy those dear ones bread at least. But long before the darkest days fell upon the South, his whole month's pay would not buy them one pound of bacon!
Secretary Memminger would seem to have had some theory, or reasons of his own, for refusing to listen to the plain common sense in these suggestions from practical sources. With a strictly agricultural population to supply, he insisted on the issue of Confederate notes in such volume that the supply far exceeded the demand. For, had there been a large manufacturing population actively employed in the South, as there was in the North, the inflation of currency might have been temporarily concealed by its rapid passage from hand to hand. But with no such demand—with only the daily necessities of the household and of the person to relieve—the plethora of these promises to pay naturally resulted, first in sluggishness, then in a complete break-down of the whole system.
Still, from the joyous days of Montgomery, and the triumphant ones after Manassas—through the doubtful pauses of the next winter and the dark days of New Orleans—on to the very Dies iræ—there pervaded government and people a secure belief that the finances of the North would break down, and the war collapse for want of money!
And so tenacious were people and rulers of this ingrained belief, that they cherished it, even while they saw the greenbacks of the Federal Government stand at 25 to 30 per cent. depreciation, while their own Treasury notes dropped rapidly from one hundred to one thousand!
Let us pause for one moment to examine upon what basis this dream was founded, before going into the sad picture of want—demoralization—ruin! into which the errors of its Treasury plunged the southern people.
Accepting the delusive estimate that all the property of the United States, in 1861, represented but one-fifth more than that of the Confederate States; and that over three-fifths of the gold duties were from cotton and cotton fabrics, and products of the South alone, it was easy for the southern eye to see a future of trial, if not of ruin, for the North. Then, too, at the beginning of the war it was reasoned that the northern army of invasion, working on exterior lines, must necessarily be greater far in numbers and in cost, than the army of defense, working on interior lines. Moreover, the vast-proposed blockade, by increasing to a point of anything like efficiency the vessels, armament, and personnel of the United States navy, would cost many millions. Thus, in short, the southern thinker could very readily persuade himself that the annual expenditures of the Federal Government must—even with the strictest economy and best management—run to unprecedented and undreamed-of sums.