And in 1860, the South was convinced that cotton could be profitably produced, if produced at all, only by slave labor. The present industrial condition of the South is the refutation of every economic and political doctrine enunciated by Jefferson Davis and his fellow-Confederates in 1860. When Lee and Johnston surrendered, the Union armies had over a million men in the ranks. Within six months 800,000 Union soldiers returned to their homes and resumed their occupations. During the year closing with June 30, 1865, the army cost the United States $1,000,000,000; two years later, reduced to a peace standing of 54,000 men, the annual cost was less than $100,000,000. The aggregate number of engagements fought during the war was 2,261, and the number of Union soldiers engaged in them (reduced to a three years' service), 1,556,678; of Confederates, 1,082,119. In the Union army 67,058 were killed in battle; 43,012 died of wounds; 24,872 died from accidents, and 224,586 from disease. The total number of deaths was nearly 360,000. It is estimated that the Confederate armies lost 94,000 killed, and 164,000 from disease and accident. Of the Union dead, there were buried in National Cemeteries 318,870, of whom nearly 150,000 (147,568) are marked "unknown"-that is, these cemeteries are the final resting-place of more men than reside to-day in the city of Philadelphia. The total number of men furnished by the States and Territories for the Union armies, not counting those credited to the navy, exceeds 2,850,000: that is a greater number than of men, of twenty-one years and over, in the cities of New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and St. Louis at the present time. If to these be added the number furnished by the South to the Confederate armies, the grand total is not far from 4,000,000-constituting the largest armed force known, by indisputable evidence, ever to have been engaged in one country at one time. The area over which this vast military body operated was nearly 200,000 square miles, bounded on the east by a blockaded coast line of more than 3,000 miles. The debt caused by the war has been variously estimated: the national debt on the day Lincoln died, had it then been adjusted, was $3,000,The Confederate debt and all cost of the war was a total loss to the South: the amount is not known; it has been estimated at from $1,500,000,000 to $3,000, 000,000. 000,000. During the war the North prospered. All forms of industrial activity were stimulated; labor was scarce, wages were high, profits large. The people of the North accepted the "forced paper issues" of the government and circulated them practically at par, though on July 11, 1864, when General Early threatened Washington, gold sold at 285-that is, a paper dollar was worth in gold only about thirty-five cents. But at no time during the war can money at the North be said to have been scarce. When the war closed there had been for some time no specie in circulation-the paper issues of fractional currency, five cent, ten, twenty-five and fifty-cent scrip taking the place of small coin. Yet the North prospered. Perhaps the most significant measure of its prosperity during the war is agricultural. The extraordinary market for food and clothing gave value to farms and farm products. Wheat sold at $3.50 a bushel, a paper-money price, but to the farmer $3.50. To this day "war prices" for farm products are the ideal returns, at the North. The soldiers, a million in number, suddenly returned to pacific pursuits, went to work at once at the most profitable and accessible work: this was farming, for the greater number. The immediate effect was the exploitation of the Northwest-Wisconsin, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska and the more intense cultivation of farms further east. In 1860, the value of farms in the North-that is the free States, was $4,322,450,258; in 1870, $7,651,935,273; and the greatest relative increase was in the Western States and Territories-Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Idaho, Washington, Oregon, California-mostly Territories at the time-$70,000,000 (1860) to $178,000,000 (1870). Further activity at the North is disclosed by the production of wool-47,000,000 pounds in 1860; 89,000,000 pounds in 1870; and in bushels of wheat: 34,000,000 in 1860; 75,000,000 in 1870. The increase both in wool and wheat was relatively greatest in the newer portion of the North-the West. During this period the South stood still, or actually fell away in production: incident not only to the actual presence of war but to the confusion and distress inseparable from a radical change in its economic system-from slave labor to free. The war demonstrated that a slaveholding community cannot hope to meet a free-labor community on equal terms-a conclusion which the two sections of the Union had been demonstrating for thirty years before the war began. No conclusion enforced by the war had not been anticipated: and perhaps the fulfillment of no prophecy was more literal than that of Lincoln, made at Springfield, more than two years before Fort Sumter was fired on that the Union could not exist half slave and half free; that it would become all the one or all the other. At the North the war has never engrossed public attention and private speech so much as at the South. The Northern mind is hostile to war; it delights in the victories of peace. The Northern mind loves to contemplate industrial enterprises, engineering conquests, the pursuits of the farm and the field: therefore the North has never cherished feelings of bitterness towards the South. To the active Northern man of to-day the Civil War seems as remote as the Revolution. The illusion is accented by the presence of surviving veterans-now mostly feeble and greyheaded men. The young North forgets that the Civil War was fought by young men-youths in their 'teens, and twenties that men were major-generals, in those days, at thirty-four, and that Grant acceded to the command of all the armies of the United States at forty-two. As the war proceeded, the general plan for the suppression of the rebellion cleared up and was adhered to till the end. A strict blockade, proclaimed April 19, 1861, by President Lincoln was enforced, and thoroughly after midsummer of that year. It prevented the Confederacy from exporting a pound of its products and from receiving supplies of any kind, save by "running the blockade," easy at first but soon a very hazardous business. This line of blockade was upwards of 3,500 miles-the sinuous Atlantic coast bounding the Confederacy on the east, and the Gulf coast on the south. A second part of the plan was to keep the border States in the Union-Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri. This was difficult; they were slaveholding States, contained a divided people, some favoring, others opposing the Confederacy: but they remained in the Union. More than this, their number was increased by the creation of West Virginia, comprising forty-eight western counties of Virginia. A third part of the plan was to surround the Confederacy by armies and fleets and crush it to deaththe "anaconda policy," as it was called: carried out by opening and controlling the Mississippi River, thus dividing the Confederacy in twain; by destroying the internal resources of the Confederacy-Sherman's "March to the Sea," and by conquering its military strongholds in detail, as at Fort Donelson, Vicksburg, Petersburg and Richmond. However easy this reads it was one of the most stupendous undertakings in military history. In its civil aspects the war was, on the part of the Nation, a war for freedom; on the part of the Confederacy, a war for slavery; defensive, the Nation; aggressive, the Confederacy. The results of the war were immediate and farreaching. The immediate results were the abolition of slavery and the emergence of the United States as a worldpower. The war demonstrated that a "nation of farmers and traders," as the London Times was pleased to describe the United States, "could," as Lincoln expressed it, "keep the jewel of liberty in the family of freedom." It also proved that a Slaveholding Confederacy tending toward the Tropics could not be established in North America. It revealed to the American people, as to the world, the marvellous creative power of the North. It gave an impetus to industrial activities which cumulating in power and efficiency have given the United States its economic place among the nations. One notable and immediate effect of the war was the opening up and settlement of the West which began while yet the war was half over. It compelled as it invited railroad extension at the North, the perfection of facilities of transportation. The modern railway system dates from war time. An extraordinary feature of the struggle was the revelation it made of the wealth of the nation's resources and its almost inexhaustible credit. This discovery was not without its perils and disasters, for it tempted communities and individuals to extravagance, over-speculation and even to corrupt acts. The Christian world was profoundly stirred by the war; the Sanitary Commission came into being, the sympathy of men North and South was touched as never before. But, in a political sense, the chief result of the war was the coming of the Nation to itself and to its own. The war set a measure of action, of ideals, of sacrifices, for all time; its action was continental, its ideals as lofty as the quality of freedom, its sacrifices, the service and the lives of multitudes of men in the flower of youth. It exalted human effort by its gift of freedom to four million slaves; it forever removed from the Republic the reproach of slavery. It familiarized the American people with vast undertakings and stripped labor of its terrors; it exalted the self-confidence of the Nation, convincing it of its impregnable position as the guardian of free institutions. It dedicated the New World to freedom and self-government and placed them among the laws which regulate the moral order of the world. It brought into fame a great company of men, of whom Lincoln and Grant are chief: the one, a rail-splitter in early life; the other, a tanner at work in the vats when the war broke out. It exalted industry and labor and stripped from the skeleton of a false chivalry the flaming military rags that wrapped it about. It dethroned King Cotton as Despot |