III.

THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR.

COST OF THE WAR.

FROM REPORT OF SPECIAL COMMISSIONER OF THE REVENUE (David A. WELLS) 1869, pp. iv-vii.

It would seem desirable at this point, now that all feeling in regard to the subject from its bearing on political questions has apparently passed away, to place upon record the exact cost of the war, as nearly as the same can be determined. With this object attention is asked to the following exhibit:

The amount of outstanding national indebted-
ness March 7, 1861, was $76,455,299.28.

The amount of outstanding indebtedness,
less cash and sinking fund in treasury,
June 30, 1869, was $2,489,002,480.58.
Deducting from this the amount of outstand-
ing indebtedness at the outbreak of the
war ($76,455,299.28), we have, as the
sum borrowed for war purposes and not

repaid out of the receipts above indicated $2,412,547,181 30

which sum represents the cost of the war to the United States government down to June 30, 1869.

To this sum should be added the value of the pensions now paid by the government on account. of the war, if the same were capitalized. This at eight years' purchase of the present annual payment, would amount to about two hundred millions.

But this aggregate, however large, must still further be increased by other items if we would reach the true cost of the war to us as a people, the above representing only the expenditures of the national government.

These additional charges are substantially as follows:

Increase of State debts, mainly on war

These estimates, which are believed to be moderate and reasonable, show an aggregate destruction of wealth, or diversion of industry, which would have produced wealth in the United States since 1861 approximating nine thousand millions of dollars—a sum nominally in excess of the entire increase of wealth, as returned by the census for the whole country from 1850 to 1860.

This, then, was the cost of the destruction of slavery; the cost of compromise; the cost of the unfaithfulness of those who founded this nation to the idea by which the nation lives. What does it measure? It is substantially a thousand millions a year for nine years; or at the wages of five hundred dollars a year, the labor of two millions of men exerted continuously during the whole of that period. It is three times as much as the slave property of the country was ever worth. It is a sum which at interest would yield to the end of time twice as much as the annual slave product of the South in its best estate...

"The places of those who sleep in their graves have been filled by new laborers; the incubus of slavery, which was slowly but surely making the fertile South a desert scorched as by a consuming fire, has been removed; thousands of miles of new railroads; inventions never before excelled in their labor-saving character; millions of acres of the richest lands opened to settlement, now render labor easy and product large." Without faltering and without tampering with the public faith, it is now the duty of this people to undertake the far easier task of payment for the service already rendered. If we hesitate or falter, dishonor, second only to that which tolerated slavery, will overwhelm the land, and the idea of a free people governing themselves will become a scorn and a by-word among nations.

PAYMENT OF THE WAR DEBT.

FROM REPORT OF THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY (HUGH MCCULLOCH) 1884, PP. xxvii-xxix.

It is in the highest degree gratifying to the Secretary to notice the great reduction of the public debt since it reached its highest point in August, 1865, and its continued reduction since his last report, in 1868. The following table exhibits the reduction both of principal and interest:

On August 31, 1865, the indebtedness of the United States, not including bonds issued to the Pacific Railroad Companies, was as follows:

Amount of debt less cash in the treasury $2,756,431,571 43

The annual interest charge was $150,977,697.87, and the average rate paid was 6 per cent.

On Nov. 1, 1868, the indebtedness of the United States, not including bonds issued to the Pacific Railroad companies was as follows:

Amount of debt less cash in the treasury $2,484,935,552 82

The annual charge was $126,408,343, and the average rate paid was 5 per cent.

On Nov. 1, 1884, the public debt was as follows:

Amount of debt less cash in the treasury $1,408,482,948 69

The annual interest charge is now (1884) $47,323,831.50, and the average rate paid 3 per cent.

Reduction of debt in sixteen years
Reduction of annual interest charge
Reduction of debt in nineteen years.
Reduction of annual interest charge

$1,076,452,604 13

79,084,511 50

1,347,948,622 74

103,653,866 37

In the management of its debt the United States has been an example to the world. Nothing has so much surprised European statesmen as the fact that immediately after the termination of one of the most expensive and, in some respects, exhaustive wars that have ever been carried on, the United States should have commenced the payment of its debt and continued its reduction through all reverses until nearly one half of it has been paid; that reduction in the rate of interest has kept pace with the reduction of the principal; that within a period of nineteen years the debt, which it was feared would be a heavy and never ending burden upon the people, has been so managed as to be no longer burdensome. It is true that all this has been effected by heavy taxes, but it is also true that these taxes have neither checked enterprise nor retarded growth.