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!"