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Economic historians attribute the remainder of the cost of the war to inflation. According to Matthew Gallman, In terms of total war spending, the federal government of the United States spent $1.8 billion and the U.S. states spent $0.5 billion. This does not count long-term costs after the war ended, such as veterans' benefits. The Confederate ...
- Overview
- The cost and significance of the Civil War
Above and beyond its superior naval forces, numbers, and industrial and financial resources, the triumph of the North was partly due to the statesmanship of Lincoln, who by 1864 had become a masterful political and war leader, as well as to the increasing skill of Federal officers. The victory can also be attributed in part to failures of Confederate transportation, matériel, and political leadership, despite the strategic and tactical dexterity of such generals as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Joseph E. Johnston.
While desertions plagued both sides, the personal valour and the enormous casualties—both in absolute numbers and in percentage of numbers engaged—have not yet ceased to astound scholars and military historians. On the basis of the three-year standard of enlistment, about 1,556,000 soldiers served in the Federal armies, and about 800,000 men probably served in the Confederate forces, though spotty records make it impossible to know for sure. Traditionally, historians have put war deaths at about 360,000 for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederates. In the second decade of the 21st century, however, a demographer used better data and more sophisticated tools to convincingly revise the total death toll upward to 752,000 and indicated that it could be as high as 851,000.
The enormous death rate—roughly 2 percent of the 1860 population of the U.S. died in the war—had an enormous impact on American society. Americans were deeply religious, and they struggled to understand how a benevolent God could allow such destruction to go on for so long. Understanding of the nature of the afterlife shifted as Americans, North and South, comforted themselves with the notion that heaven looked like their front parlors. A new mode of dealing with corpses emerged with the advent of embalming, an expensive method of preservation that helped wealthier families to bring their dead sons, brothers, or fathers home. Finally, a network of federal military cemeteries (and private Confederate cemeteries) grew out of the need to bury the men in uniform who had succumbed to wounds or disease.
Some have called the American Civil War the last of the old-fashioned wars; others have termed it the first modern war. Actually, it was a transitional war, and it had a profound impact, technologically, on the development of modern weapons and techniques. There were many innovations. It was the first war in history in which ironclad warships clashed; the first in which the telegraph and railroad played significant roles; the first to use, extensively, rifled ordnance and shell guns and to introduce a machine gun (the Gatling gun); the first to have widespread newspaper coverage, voting by servicemen in the field in national elections, and photographic recordings; the first to organize medical care of troops systematically; and the first to use land and water mines and to employ a submarine that could sink a warship. It was also the first war in which armies widely employed aerial reconnaissance (by means of balloons).
Above and beyond its superior naval forces, numbers, and industrial and financial resources, the triumph of the North was partly due to the statesmanship of Lincoln, who by 1864 had become a masterful political and war leader, as well as to the increasing skill of Federal officers. The victory can also be attributed in part to failures of Confederate transportation, matériel, and political leadership, despite the strategic and tactical dexterity of such generals as Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Joseph E. Johnston.
While desertions plagued both sides, the personal valour and the enormous casualties—both in absolute numbers and in percentage of numbers engaged—have not yet ceased to astound scholars and military historians. On the basis of the three-year standard of enlistment, about 1,556,000 soldiers served in the Federal armies, and about 800,000 men probably served in the Confederate forces, though spotty records make it impossible to know for sure. Traditionally, historians have put war deaths at about 360,000 for the Union and 260,000 for the Confederates. In the second decade of the 21st century, however, a demographer used better data and more sophisticated tools to convincingly revise the total death toll upward to 752,000 and indicated that it could be as high as 851,000.
The enormous death rate—roughly 2 percent of the 1860 population of the U.S. died in the war—had an enormous impact on American society. Americans were deeply religious, and they struggled to understand how a benevolent God could allow such destruction to go on for so long. Understanding of the nature of the afterlife shifted as Americans, North and South, comforted themselves with the notion that heaven looked like their front parlors. A new mode of dealing with corpses emerged with the advent of embalming, an expensive method of preservation that helped wealthier families to bring their dead sons, brothers, or fathers home. Finally, a network of federal military cemeteries (and private Confederate cemeteries) grew out of the need to bury the men in uniform who had succumbed to wounds or disease.
Some have called the American Civil War the last of the old-fashioned wars; others have termed it the first modern war. Actually, it was a transitional war, and it had a profound impact, technologically, on the development of modern weapons and techniques. There were many innovations. It was the first war in history in which ironclad warships clashed; the first in which the telegraph and railroad played significant roles; the first to use, extensively, rifled ordnance and shell guns and to introduce a machine gun (the Gatling gun); the first to have widespread newspaper coverage, voting by servicemen in the field in national elections, and photographic recordings; the first to organize medical care of troops systematically; and the first to use land and water mines and to employ a submarine that could sink a warship. It was also the first war in which armies widely employed aerial reconnaissance (by means of balloons).
2 days ago · Cost to board with private families rose from $1.50 to $4 per week over the 1860s. 1868-1869 Law School tuition was $30 per term and board was $2 to $4 per week; Louisiana: Academy for Boys in Baton Rouge, 1866; Massachusetts: Bookkeeping school, ca. 1860-1862; Missouri: Saint Louis University, 1860 and 1868-1869; New York state:
- Marie Concannon
- 2012
Mar 23, 2011 · The income tax during the Civil War—the first in U.S. history—was not onerous by today’s standards. Early in the Civil War, Congress passed a flat 3 percent tax on all income over $800 (which was much more than most families earned). Then Congress made the tax progressive and raised the top marginal rate to 10 percent.
Sep 16, 2010 · 1825-Ten pounds of sugar cost $0.20 (1822)-One acre in a tract of land of over 400 acres cost $2.00 (Sumter, SC, 1823)-One bushel (35.2 liters) of potatoes cost $0.12 (1829)
1860 $ in 1861 (billions) Cost to Northa .7106. Cost to South .5090 a We arrive at these figures by multiplying hypothetical per capita consumption in each year by the number of war related deaths for that year, and then discounting to 1861.
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Oct 17, 2024 · This method takes into account the war’s impact on the economy and provides a more accurate representation of the war’s cost. The US GDP in 1860 was around $6.2 billion. The war’s cost, as a percentage of GDP, was approximately 21.6%. Using this percentage, the war’s cost in today’s GDP (around $22.6 trillion) would be $4.9 trillion.
