what was the economic cost of the civil war

Several features of Confederate finance immediately stand out in comparison to the Union effort. The North/South Controversy was an Economic One, Free white labor for the western territories. But was the war really the “Second American Revolution” as Beard (1927) and Louis Hacker (1940) claimed? In 1862 Congress finally passed legislation creating the National Banking System. As a nation, the United States was still . After the adjustments, the estimated costs for the war totaled more than $10 billion. The “Beard-Hacker Thesis” had become the most widely accepted interpretation of the economic impact of the Civil War. There could be little doubt that the prosperity of the slave economy rested on its ability to produce cotton more efficiently than any other region of the world. destroy the Confederacy's economy. This transfer will constitute the largest redistribution of wealth in human history. Chinese Civil War, (1945-49), military struggle for control of China waged between the Nationalists (Kuomintang) under Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists under Mao Zedong.. “Conflicting Visions: The American Civil War as a Revolutionary Conflict.” Research in Economic History 20 (2001). The Union also experienced inflation as a result of deficit finance during the war; the consumer price index rose from 100 at the outset of the war to 175 by the end of 1865. Southerners complained that even this level of protection was excessive and that it was one more example of the willingness of the West and the North to make economic bargains at the expense of the South (Ransom and Sutch 2001; Egnal 2001:50-52). United States, Bureau of the Census. Category. Goldin, Claudia Dale. Yes, it ended slavery. The Civil War has often been called the first “modern” war. Southerners, with their emphasis on staple agriculture and need to buy goods produced outside the South, strongly objected to the imposition of duties on imported goods. The Beards state, "The Second American Revolution, while destroying the economic foundation of the slaveowning aristocracy, assured the triumph of business enterprise…. The best measure of this instability and eventual collapse can be seen in the behavior of prices. (All the figures for the costs in Table 3 have been adjusted to reflect their discounted value in 1860.) Despite a well-documented link between lower education levels and children exposed to civil war and genocide, few studies have investigated the economic cost. “War Finance in the Southern Confederacy.” Explorations in Economic History 30 (1993): 352-377. However there were far more small towns scattered throughout settled regions of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin and Michigan than in the Southern landscape. “Growth and Welfare in the American South in the Nineteenth Century.” Explorations in Economic History 16 (1979): 207-235. The destruction of slavery meant that the entire Southern economy had to be rebuilt. Northern and western congressmen strongly favored the bill in the House of Representatives but the measure received only a single vote from slave states’ representatives. The need for government- sponsored improvements was particularly urgent in the Great Lakes region (Egnal 2001: 45-50). With more developed markets and an industrial base that could ultimately produce the goods needed for the war, the Union was clearly in a better position to meet this challenge. McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era. By the mid 1830s, cotton shipments accounted for more than half the value of all exports from the United States. The Economic Cost of the American Civil 'War: Estimates and Implications We are right to see power, prestige, and confidence as conditioned by the Civil War. A leading historian of the Civil War, James McPherson, argues that Southerners were correct when they claimed that the revolutionary program sweeping through the North threatened their way of life (1983; 1988). Keywords: civil war, instability, economic growth, investment, fiscal balance JEL codes: C23, E62, O11 Jeremy M. Weinstein is a PhD Candidate in Political Economy and Government at Harvard University. So... what do you think? By the time of the Second World War, Louis Hacker could sum up Beard’s position by simply stating that the war’s “striking achievement was the triumph of industrial capitalism” (Hacker 1940: 373). With the imposition of a higher tariff, excise taxes, and the introduction of the first income tax in American history, this situation improved somewhat, and by the war’s end 25 percent of the federal government revenues had been collected in taxes. This all came to a head with the “Homestead Act” of 1860 that would provide 160 acres of free land for anyone who wanted to settle and farm the land. Over the last quarter of the nineteenth century, gross crop output in the South rose by about one percent per year at a time when the GNP of United States (including the South) was rising at twice that rate. Following the opening of the Erie Canal in 1823, there was growing support in the North and the Northwest for government support of improvement in transportation facilities — what were termed in those days “internal improvements”. Men and women have lost limbs, their eyesight, or been maimed in other ways both emotionally and physically, which is perhaps one reason why America seeks funding for their defense budget very differently from the way they sought money for the first two conflicts. This turned out to be a monumental task; far larger than anyone at the time imagined. Abstract. Let us keep what remains for ourselves .. for free white labor.". During the first half of the twentieth century, historians viewed the war as a major turning point in American economic history. Found inside – Page 93SEE ALSO Casualties FURTHER READING Goldin, Claudia and Frank Lewis. “The Economic Cost of the American Civil War.” Journal of Economic History 35, No. Was the South Wrong in Allowing or Supporting Slavery? This paper discusses some of the conceptual and methodological problems associated with assessing the economic costs of civil wars and other violent social conflicts, and presents an evaluation of the costs of the (still ongoing) conflict in Sri Lanka. Thus, going to war made as much “economic sense” as buying out the slaveholders. James Huston (1999) carries the argument one step further by arguing that Southerners were correct in their fears that the triumph of this coalition would eventually lead to an assault by Northern politicians on slave property rights. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45), China was effectively divided into three regions—Nationalist China under control of the government . a platinum member at American Civil War Forum. Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1970. Estimates of the Cost of the American Civil War. August 24, 2001. To this they add $1.8 billion to account for the discounted economic value of casualties in the war, and they add $1.5 billion to account for the destruction of the war in the South. The unique curriculum of the online Master of Arts in Military History program was developed by the distinguished faculty of Norwich University and guided by the goals outlined by the American Historical Association. By mid-1864 the costs of paying interest on outstanding government bonds absorbed more than half all government expenditures. War and Economics: Spanish Civil War Finances Revisited (*). The bill that best illustrates the regional disputes on transportation was the Pacific Railway Bill of 1860, which proposed a transcontinental railway link to the West Coast. No one seriously doubts that the enormous economic stake the South had in its slave labor force was a major factor in the sectional disputes that erupted in the middle of the nineteenth century. Found insideThis title is an examination of the everyday economy, experiences, and livelihoods in the context of Sri Lanka's civil war. Though it lasted fewer than four years, World War II was the most expensive war in United States history. I have lately come to the opinion that slavery per se had nothing to do with starting the war, rather, economics is at the heart of the issue. For the first 10 years of the civil war, the Lebanese economy proved remarkably resilient; after the mid-1980s, however, the value of the Lebanese pound plummeted as the continued destruction of the country's infrastructure took its toll. The low price of raw cotton produced by slave labor in the American South enabled textile manufacturers — both in the United States and in Britain — to expand production and provide benefits to consumers through a declining cost of textile products. During Reconstruction , many small white farmers, thrown into poverty by the war, entered into cotton production, a major change from prewar days when they concentrated on growing food for their own families. Estimates of the Cost of the American Civil War. Even after 150 years, the Civil War evokes memories of great men and great battles. While this was a perfectly reasonable response, it had the effect of creating an apparent labor “shortage” and it convinced white landlords that a free labor system could never work with the ex-slaves; thus further complicating an already unsettled labor market. The magnitudes of the indirect effects are detailed in Table 3. derivative work: Kenmayer, via Wikimedia Commons. An advantage in resources can be readily transformed Like the agricultural South they disliked the idea of a high “protective” tariff that raised the cost of imports. By contrast, less than 7 percent of people in the 11 Southern states of Table 2 lived in urban counties. Wednesday, March 23, 2011. In 1860, it would include the bulk of the Wilmot Proviso as its party platform. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Found insidecancer n. any malignant tumor . . . Metastasis may occur via the bloodstream or the lymphatic channels or across body cavities . . . setting up secondary tumors . . . Each individual primary tumor has its own pattern . . . By clicking 'Submit' or otherwise submitting this form you agree to the, By entering this site you declare Banking. The manner in which the federal government distributed land to people could have a major impact on the nature of farming in a region. “The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market Preserving Federalism and Economic Development.” Journal of Law, Economics and Organization 11 (1995): 1:31. Our estimates suggest that the costs of conflict since 1983 may be at least . The idea is to examine this cost, not only in terms of the deaths and casualties and the economic costs borne by the people involved, but also the social, developmental, environmental and strategic costs of conflict. Walton, Gary M., and Hugh Rockoff. The Impact of the English Civil War on the Economy of London, 1642-50 examines every sector of London's economy as it changed during the English Civil War. Gunderson compares the “costs” of the war (which we discuss below) with the cost of “compensated” emancipation and notes that the two are roughly the same order of magnitude — 2.5 to 3.7 billion dollars (1974: 940-42). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998. Personnel numbers have expanded; so have costs of wages and benefits to personnel who have retired from active service or been discharged due to disability caused by explosives, exotic diseases, and artillery, often while defending other countries against religious extremists, not defending US citizens. Consequently, the Northern economy was able to finance the war without a significant reduction in private consumption. Abraham Lincoln probably summarized the situation as well as anyone when he observed in his second inaugural address that: “Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.”. Require local financial services or nearby manufacturing activities that might generate urban activities here the normal made! Few goods keep blacks out of the government responded with greater and deadlier force to suppress the protests demonstrators. Under control of the United States History nearby manufacturing activities that might urban... Provided over half of the railroad in the population of Extremes takes on the other about costs!, new South: Revolutions in the South was physically destroyed what was the economic cost of the civil war four years of Civil war men... 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