Center for Technology and Teacher Education - Social Studies Module: Financing the Confederacy's War Effort

Procedures

By addressing the economic aspects of the war effort and their differing effects on certain populations, this lesson attempts to fill out students’ basic picture of the Civil War. This lesson would be appropriate for secondary students towards the end of a unit on the Civil War or in an economics class where historical perspectives were welcomed. Students should understand the basic facts and issues involved in the war before beginning this lesson. Some background information is provided relating to the economics of the Civil War.

Begin the lesson by discussing expenses that are specifically associated with waging any war (transporting troops, ammunition, initiating a draft, feeding and clothing more soldiers, jobs left undone when soldiers are recruited, etc). Ask students to brainstorm about various ways governments might finance wars (some appropriate answers include borrowing, printing more money, raising taxes, encouraging bond investment, and forcing contributions, e.g. food, military service). Explain any of these policies if needed. Have students brainstorm what the various negative and positive consequences of these policies might be and how, as a government leader, they might know which policy to choose based on the country’s specific conditions (e.g. a society that strongly valued civil liberties might have a difficult time being forced to contribute their own crops).

Present all students with a copy of the following article from the October 27, 1863 edition of The Staunton Spectator. Use the articulate argument presented here as a basis for an explanation of inflation. Discuss how not everyone loses during inflation and ask students to hypothesize about who might have written this article and to whom it is directed. This article couples the purposes of this lesson well – understanding economic concepts while more fully developing a picture of the Civil War. The concept of inflation is not learned in a vacuum but in the context of a situation where it affected history. The South’s disastrous experiment with printing paper money led to hyperinflation on an unprecedented scale further decreasing the Confederacy’s morale and confidence in the government.

Provide the students with a more complete picture of inflation in both the North and South during the Civil War with the following figures. A graphical representation of the data is available.

NORTH
Wholesale prices in 1861	100
1862	117
1863	148
1864	189
1865	216

SOUTH
Wholesale prices Jan-April 1861	100
Dec 1861	172
Dec 1862	686
Dec 1863	2464
Dec 1864	4285
April 1865	9211

- taken from Gallman 1994, p. 97.

Use these figures to make inflation become real to students. Generate simple examples, such as an item costing $100 in the North and South before the war increasing to $216 at the end of the war in the North and $9211 in the South! Ask them to think about the specifics of paying $9211 for an item that you expect to cost $100. How would people obtain $9211?

Fill out the picture of hyperinflation by not only talking about buying goods that now cost $9211, but by adding the ideas of saving and selling goods under these conditions. Leave that question hanging when you divide students into groups of five. Explain that each group of five is a cluster of Southern people representing different segments of society. Have students divide the following five roles among group members:

Southern planter (farmer who owned slaves as well as a sizeable plot of land and who sold substantial quantities of his crops on the market for a signficant profit)

Southern yeoman (farmer who generally did not have many slaves, owned a small size plot, and struggled to make much of a profit)

Southern skilled wage earner (one example is a carpenter)

Southern unskilled wage earner (one example is someone who delivers goods)

Southern merchant (a person who owned a store and sold everyday goods)

Each cluster will be given a set of primary documents that deal with some of the economic issues of the Civil War. Given their assigned roles, they must determine how the South’s economic policies affected them. Students will have to make inferences based on the documents and what they know about the South’s economic policies. You may wish to provide some background information depending on their level of expertise. With their group members’ help, each person should write a paragraph in the first person describing how their economic situation has developed during the war. They should include emotions in their writing as most people do when it comes to money! This task should be a group effort with each person in the group understanding the different effects of the country’s fiscal policies on various socioeconomic groups.

Bring the whole class back together in a plenary session where students share ideas for each occupation. Ask all students who wrote a paragraph as a Southern planter to come forward and read their ideas. Continue this with each occupation. Generate a chart which lists the consequences for the five occupations. You may print out a chart for students to fill in as they discuss this as a class.

To further deepen their understanding of the North and South’s differing approaches to fiscal policy during the war, provide students with the following figures to stimulate discussion:

Ways to finance the war	% used by North	% used by South
Contributions in kind, impressment	4	5
Tax	21	4
Bonds	62	30
Printing money	13	61

Some possible questions to prompt students:

Why would both the North and South have used impressment so infrequently? [Use this as an opportunity to talk about the economic terms of incentives and disincentives. Have students bring up evidence from their primary source readings supporting or refuting these figures.]

If impressment was used so infrequently, why did so many of the primary sources students read express anger at the government for forcing people to contribute? [If students struggle here, ask them to think about some of the reasons the South seceded. Encourage them to think about the strong rebellious spirit in the South and the distaste for national control that led to the war.]