Emphasis on a decentralized government. Prof. Martinez good afternoon, everyone. How are you all doing . Our topic for today is the second part of our civil war content for the semester. About to talk today Economic Policy and social events tied to the economy. I titled this feeding the confederacy. We will talk about the crucial issue of how you make sure your soldiers and civilians have enough to eat over the course of the war. There are two key ironies of this confederate experience for me, that historians of the confederacy point to. One is that the Confederate States of america is a predominantly agricultural nation. Of the unionrity and confederacy live on farms. We are dealing with a population overwhelmingly living on farms. Yet they will struggle to feed themselves more often than they will run out of bullets and armaments. This is surprising when you think of an agricultural nation. The second big ironing is secession documents before they founded the confederacy said we want a limited government with more power given to the states, yet the confederate government will become stronger and more invasive than any Government People had seen to this point in order to wage war and feed everyone. Two key ironies. We will talk about how they come about. A flashpoint for this question of how you feed everyone is a series of riots in the spring of 1863 in the confederacy, most notably in the capital city of richmond, although it happens elsewhere as well. Spring 1863 timing here is crucial. Talked last time about the anaconda plan and the blockade. We are almost two years into the war. The blockade is now effective enough that it is getting difficult to find special commodities and key foods that cannot be grown locally through the south. That is one key factor. Another factor is that it is simply early spring and the food people stored in the fall and early winter as they were getting in their crops, they are starting to run out of it. The new things they planted in the spring have not come yet. There is always going to be a shortage of food that this particular moment. It is exasperated by elements of the war. The richmond bread riot is primarily enacted by women, women working in the factories of richmond who were shopkeepers, who were small producers. Smallscale farmers who lived on the outskirts of the city. They have a number of concerns. It smallscale farmers found harder and harder to bring their produce into the market and sell it. The women working in the factories and shops cant get the food they need for their families. Their wages arent keeping up with the cost of commodities, as it is getting harder to find things. Most of their husbands are in the army, or there are a number of widows prominently involved in this. Their initial plan is to talk to the governor for help. Richmond is the capital of the confederacy, but also the capital of virginia. They get to the governors house early on the morning of april 2 and find out he already left to go to the capital. They march further into town. People join them. It gets bigger. It gets rowdier. People start going into stores and grabbing the food and clothes that were hard to get hold of. It becomes destructive. They get to the capital and the president of the confederacy, Jefferson Davis, comes out and orders them to disperse. Tells them he is contemptuous of them. He tells them, go home to your families, do what women are supposed to do. They say we are trying to feed our families, this is what women are supposed to do. He throws gold coins at them and tells them they will be fired on by soldiers if they dont leave within five minutes. All in all, this is not good press for the confederacy. Richmond gets a lot of attention. This illustration comes from a northern newspaper mocking the women, showing them sending their husbands off to war early on, the southern belles and beautiful dresses, and after two years of war, they have become these sort of unattractive animal like women in the streets stealing food. There are riots elsewhere, bu richmondt gets the most attention because it is the capital and also because of how Jefferson Davis responded. Particularly soldiers in the Confederate Army are not thrilled when they hear the president suggested firing guns on women in the streets, some of whom might be their wives or sisters, who are just demanding food. The response from the government will be important. It doesnt look to a lot of people like the confederate government does anything in response, but that is not the case. But i want to go back to what causes this particular crisis. Int are the factors going on the confederacy . On some level, there are roots to the roots agricultural voices made prior to the civil war. Choices made prior to the civil war. We talked about this effective productive slaveholding economy that created great wealth. People invested their money and andgy in land and slaves the cash crops of cotton primarily, but to a lesser extent, things like rice and sugar. Being the keyheat cash crop. A lot of energy put into getting crops to market quickly and shared quickly was focused on cotton and export rather than spreading food around the south. That was less of a priority because that was not where money was to be made. It was an economically logical decision prior to the war that ends up being a problem because this war is going on and on. Nobody thought it would last or than a couple months. Thesears in, all problems have begun to emerge. We will see fewer problems getting food to those who need it in the United States, in the union states, because there had been more effort put in the 1840s in processing food crops for distribution and market. We talked about the stockyards in chicago and wheat being brought and processed. Todays a negative that already exist there is a mechanism that already exists for getting pigs to market distributable meat. There is a process with wheat already in place that can be used by the u. S. Army. The confederacy does not have the same equivalent for distillation of food for distribution of food. They make up for it better than anyone was necessarily anticipating, but it wasnt a perfect system. When we turn to the events of , where where the armies the majority of the time in 1862 . They are in virginia and tennessee and the upper Mississippi River valley. These are the places that grew most of the food, particularly the bank wheat farms big wheat farms of slaveholding states were in these regions that had armies trampling through them far more often in the first two years of the war than some places primarily growing things like cotton and sugar. That is another key factor. I mentioned the blockade has started to be effective. By keeping out everything 81863 1863, but it makes a difference in what people can get a hold of. Wealthy people might be able to get things, the people involved in the bread riots struggle to get commodities. Not bread so much, but coffee, things that had to be imported into the confederacy. Two other key factors tied to policies set in place by state and National Government in 1862 to help the confederacy wage war, the first of which is conscription, the draft. The draft of the confederacy already began in spring of 1862. When they are facing that string of defeats in the mississippi , all of those things were leading up to a sense in spring of 1862 that the confederacy was struggling. The draft is part of that. It takes more men out of the field and puts them into the army. It sets in motion a process that , by the end of the civil war, will put over 80 of adults and older teenaged white men into the armies. That is a huge number. Under any circumstances, it will be difficult to keep the home front economy going when you are pulling that massive portion of a population and putting it in the army. That process is not complete by the spring of 1863, but the draft existed for a most a year and is having an impact. Another impact on available free black and American Indian men to do work for the army. There was a guest lecture we had at the end of last month. These laws start at the state level. The state of virginia in fall of 1862, the state of North Carolina put laws in place to make it easier to enforce slaveholders to give up their workers for several months at a dig and send them to ditches, help build railroads, do the manual labor the army needs. That is going to pull more people out of the field. It starts in october when the harvest is going on. It continues into the spring and march when spring planting needs to happen. Those factors are reducing the number of people available to grow and maintain and harvest in many food producing areas of the confederacy, leading us to the bread riots. Peoplesey factor in ability to buy food if you live in a city and are not growing your own food, you are buying it in your local stores or from local producers. The cost of stuff is going up dramatically. Things are getting more expensive because of inflation. The confederacy prints massive amounts of paper currency. This gets underway in 1862 as well. By the spring of 1863, things are not looking great. This graph will show you the increase in the cost of gold. What it takes to buy a dollar worth of gold in confederate dollar bills. The real jump is a little bit later in the summer of 18 623 and 1863 and 1864. It is starting. Prices are going up. This midway point is the start of 1863. We are starting to see things shoot up in cost. The value of paper confederate currency is going down. The states are printing their own currency. There is money everywhere. The more there is, the less it is worth. It is harder to buy things, particularly for factory earners being paid in currency and their wages are not going up every time the inflation rate goes up. That is another key factor in all of this. To put that inflation rate in more real terms, there is a clerk in the Confederate War Department named john jones who every so often would write in his diary the cost of a barrel of flour. I picked some of the dates. This is a barrel of flour going 20 beforefrom 18, the war begins to the spring of 1863. It has doubled, which is big. It is a huge difference. Compared to where it is going, 500 a barrel by the end of the bad. 40 doesnt seem so but the cost of a barrel of flour has doubled and your wages have nowhere near doubled. Before that we often introverted the confederate government often interpreted the confederate governments response to this unrest as being insufficient, that they didnt really do anything. Part of white historians have seen it that way and People Living through it thought it happened that way is because of the way they responded. They did things, but often their response was through National Policies that got implemented by local governments. They gave local governments tools or especially told local governments to do things that would help mitigate some of this crisis. Credit for having done anything. The county court, the county commissioners, the home guard other place by the state, locally appointed officials are the ones doing these things. It doesnt seem like it is the confederacy, but often there is a National Policy behind that. What are some examples of confederate Economic Policy . One everyone knew was the confederacy. One they did not like was the tax. No one wants to pay taxes. We have had that before. The confederacy has no national tax in currency or in gold. In whatin kind is a tax you did produce. If you were a wheat farmer, it was a portion of your wheat crop. Cows, it was a portion of them. Whatever you are producing is a portion of your crop. Scheduled regularly certain day. A if you are already struggling, if you live on the margins and your farm is just enough to make it, handing over 10 or 15 of the government is a big deal, particularly if you were struggling before the war and your husband is away or you were injured and are trying to come ame, this tax can be significant burden for people. This is a policy no one is happy about. Knowsr policy everyone that no one is happy about is impressment of stuff. Not just impressment of labor. We talked about slaves and free people of color, both africanamerican and indian, being impressed. But the government is also impressing food, supplies, wagons, harnesses, horses, m ules, cows, whatever they need when they come through your community. There are two types of impressment. One is, the army is here. They are marching through town. They will take what they need. There is not much notice they are coming. You pretty much have to give them what they are asking for. They will give you a receipt. The receipt is for confederate currency, which we already discussed is declining in value. People are unhappy about this. Sometimes they fight back. Sometimes they get arrested. Sometimes people are shot for refusing to hand over goods to the confederate authorities. It is a legal form of impressment, but it is unpredictable. Isther form of impressment quotas. On top of your tax in kind, you are expected to hand over another portion of your stuff for impressment. Tax in kind, you dont get directly reimbursed. You get a government and an army. Impressment, you get promise of direct reimbursement. Sometimes you get paid if you live close to richmond. Sometimes the local impressment agent will come back and bring your payment. This is a National Policy. There are state and National Laws about this, but the work of doing it is done by local people. I have studied this man who lives in a county in central heginia who was appointed was in the Confederate Army and sent home to do this work. He was part of a prominent family. He had been a teacher. He was well respected in his community. This is important. You want someone seen as honest that will keep good records of what they have taken. He spends the whole spring, summer, and fall traveling to his county collecting information about what people are growing and producing so he can collect corn, wheat, meat, things the army needs to function. He will collect it every so often on a boat he bought and take it to richmond to the ward apartment. This is happening on a daytoday basis. We have this government intruding in your production on your farms on a daily basis. We will see a number of other state policies. Because virginia in particular is in the middle of it all the time, it enacts additional state laws that add to this. , they put their own spin on the conscription laws. For thecription law confederacy says if you have 20 or more slaves, you get one exemption from conscription. There are a lot of rules placed on this. By the end of the civil war, confederate conscription covers all white men ages 17 to 55. If you have 20 or more slaves, you get an exemption. You are supposed to use the exemption for the overseer, the person who maintains the farm on a daytoday basis. You have to keep feeding people. You have to keep the farms going. You cant keep the farms going if no one is making the slaves work. The conscription policy is designed to make sure there is someone on the ground making sure the slaves are growing the food the army needs to eat. States will see is the putting their own spin on conscription laws and saying if you dont grow a primary crop, wheat, corn, cattle if you are not growing food as your primary crop, you dont get the exemption. We need more food. We dont need more cotton. Says if reduces it and you have 15 or more slaves, you get the exemption, but you have to be growing food crops. Tobacco is out. Someone who is a big producer of crops who doesnt have enough slaves, the person will be requested to be detailed and sent home. He is enlisted in the Confederate Army, then sent home and told his job for the time being is to grow food. If needed, he will be called to fight, but he is probably more valuable growing food. There are all of these tweaks on the policy. That is why we will see the numbers say 90 plus of the men in this community were enlisted in the Confederate Army. That does not mean they are in the army all the time. Some have been sent home. They are doing jobs at home that are more necessary for the army than their service as soldiers. They can be called up if necessary at the last minute. Examples of how they are trying to resolve this economic problem by getting more people on farms, growing food, so people can keep eating. Ways also examples of the the confederate government is therting itself into daytoday life of people in the south. We will see the War Department take control of the big movers, the railroads. Majority ofhe railroads still operational not in United States territory by the end of the war are primarily controlled by the confederate government. Moving soldiers takes priority. There is an interest in making sure food gets distributed to keep the population going. The soldiers are constantly getting letters from their wives saying we will starve to death if you dont come home. Eventually you have a desertion problem. You need to make sure civilians have enough to eat. That will be a constant concern for the War Department. A surprisingly important factor in the confederate war experience, because it is the only way to preserve meat for a long time before refrigeration. You kill a chicken in the afternoon, no big deal. Is hundredsig, that of pounds of meat. You have to preserve it for the long run. Confederateco primary confederate ration is salted pork. The people need salt to preserve their own food. There is a massive salt mine is virginia. A huge amount of Army Resources are put into this place in western virginia that, for the most part, is not near any of the battles. But it is heavily fortified. They are constantly sending slaves out to build rail lines to connect salt to fill to the saltville to the rest of the confederacy. Each state is put in charge of handing out salt rations to the people. The county governments are told you have a pound of salt per person. It varies depending on the season and how much might need to be preserved. Send someone from your county to pick up your salt, then make sure it gets distributed. This is another industry being nationalized. The process of distribution is handed back to local governments. We will also see price controls put in place by the confederate congress. Anig debate over what is appropriate price for richmondes, because in the prices have gone up faster than others in the country that are more remote from the conflict. Big is a fair price is a subject of debate. The Confederate Army will pay for these products, whether it is cornmeal or wheat or pork. Here is the confederate governments purchasing price. You might be able to charge ordinary civilians more, but this is what the government will pay. This is a problem for producers because they are not making as much money as they could without controls in place. Fornds up being helpful Small Farmers and their wives struggling economically because the confederacy tells county governments they can also purchase at these government prices and distribute food to the wives and widows of soldiers. It is an example of National Policy enabling the government to meet the needs of the people. It doesnt look like it is the federal government doing anything, because it is the State Government giving you food. But they are only able to do that because of a federal policy put in place. Are there any questions so far . We have about 20 minutes left. Andnted to switch gears and about the United States some of its policies. I wanted to provide some comparison points. Is the will see happen are ablens in the u. S. To take control. In the aftermath of the election of 1860, they did not have a majority. Democrats left. The republicans became the majority in congress. What they are going to enact looks a lot like what the whig party wanted in terms of the whigsic plan that the wanted to put in place in the 1840s and never managed to. Migrated to the republican party. Those things helped the United States wage war. For example, a national bank. We keep hearing about it. Second jackson killed the bank. The third bank is created as a way for the u. S. Government to better gather supplies of the countryside, to have one functional national currency. In addition to a bank, we are not just dealing with banknotes, they legislate the creation of legitimate paper money. Through something called the legal tender act, those printed u. S. Dollars during the civil war specifically say this bill is legal tender for all debts public and private. The confederate money is not legal tender. The government prints and authorizes it, but does not have the same statement about legal tender, so someone can say i do not consider this to be money. U. S. Money says this is money and everyone has to accept it as much. The other thing that helps keep inflation under control is they enact a National Income tax in the United States. The Supreme Court rules it unconstitutional during the war. Balance the money going out by having some money coming back in. Inflation in the u. S. Over the 75 , war ends up being which is a lot. That means something you by costs buy costs seven times what it was before the war, but we are not going into the 800 times like the confederacy. 9000 erate inflation is officially. The u. S. Plan works better than the confederate plan at keeping the economy going. U. S. Congress has time to do other things besides wage war. That is where some of this old whig policy comes up. We get a homestead act that makes plans for settling the west in a more official form than had been happening, specifically giving small farms plus of land. Plots of land. 60 acres. If you go out west and can improve your form, pl farm, plant a crop, build a dwelling structure, you get to keep the 60 acres for free. This doesnt work if you are indigent. You have to have enough money to crop inwest, to put a the ground, but you dont have to buy the land. This is for people in the free labor ideology to use their own resources to move up, for the government to help them to become independent landowners in the u. S. The slaveholding states had blocked it because they did not want little farms across the u. S. That would prevent the spread of big plantations. We also see the Republican Congress pass the landgrant college act, which gives the states a way to fund the creation of universities, schools for teacher training, but state colleges and onversities that will focus agriculture and engineering. Public universities of the. Idwest in particular landgrant meaning each state is aving land in the west, in territory they can sell to land speculators, to the railroad company, and use the money to fund their school systems. Congress is giving them a way to get money to do these things. We also see Congress Pass the allows for theat creation of the transcontinental railroad. We talked about this in the 1850s being something everyone over where a debate it was going to go and is this primary route going to end in a slaveholding or nonslaveholding area . We see the republicans in congress in the United States also creating this much more economically active government that had existed before the war. On would have signed it would have been hard to get the bank act and legal tax through congress if the war hadnt made it necessary. The federal government had the same experience to a greater level, because they had to put all of their energy and resources into waging war and becoming that economically active government that had its hands in everything to feed the population. The fact that it worked for as long as it did says a lot about how effective those systems there. While robert elys army robert e. Lees army is having successes. They gave Virginia Farmers some space to grow crops collected on their behalf later. All of those battles we talked about being at places of transportation is because there was food to gather and a mechanism for doing that that involved people all over the confederacy. That is what i have for today. Any questions . I do want to take attendance. Hang out. Dont go anywhere. I just want to make sure i got everyone as you were coming in. Thanks so much. I guess we are going to finish early. You can watch lectures in history every weekend in American History tv. Ke you inside classrooms to learn about topics from the American Revolution to 9 11. That is 8 00 p. M. And midnight eastern on cspan3. It is easy to follow the federal response to the coronavirus outbreak at cspan. Org coronavirus. Track the spread through the u. S. And the world with interactive maps and charts. Watch briefings with public specialists anytime, unfiltered, at cspan. Org coronavirus. You can watch archival films on Public Affairs each week on our series reel america. Saturday at 10 00 p. M. And sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. Here is a look at a recent program. Withruses can be scattered each particle of saliva and mucus. Ehen one is or costs on sneezes or coughs, for instance. If by some magic the tiny particles of saliva or mucus could be made visible as black smudge, we will be aware in other ways how it scatters. Jane has a cold. [coughing] look at those terms she leaves on the doorknob. Here is bobs hand picking them up. Germ,is hand covers with transfers them to a book. Sue, having a bad habit of wetting her hand to turn pages, carries the germs to her mom, then carries them with a pencil to anne. Anne carries them home and leaves them on the family dinner table. Even during an ordinary conversation, saliva and mucus particles easily reached others who inhale them. Watch how breath becomes visible on a cold day. Coldsn we avoid having all the time . Fortunately our body has defenses against this enemy. Normally we breathe through our nose. The nose, as well as the sinuses ad throat are lined with delicate membrane. If, under a likely scope under a microscope you look at the membrane, you can see tiny threads called cilia. They move back and forth like stocks of grain stalks of grain in a field. Cilia are covered with a warm sticky substance called mucus. The nose secretes a court of this liquid quart of this liquid every 24 hours. This mucus prepares it for our lungs. The mucus catches and destroys microorganisms, that is bacteria and viruses. If you have a cold, dont stay in school, because if you do, you may send others home with your cold. If you have a cold, stay home. Stay in bed. This is the prescription which common sense and medical science recommend. Those yourbut only doctor prescribes. You can watch archival films on Public Affairs in their entirety on our weekly series reel america saturday at 10 00 p. M. And sunday at 4 00 p. M. Eastern here on American History tv. A look at u. S. And japanese perspectives on world war ii. Speakers include one whose father was a japanese ambassador, with key roles in the 1940 alliance among nazi germany, italy and japan, and negotiations in washington dc leading up to the pearl harbor attack. We also hear from the grandson of a colonel who served as intelligence chief under general Dwight Eisenhower in the european theater. Hauenstein Center Hosted the event. Welcome to our cspan and grand rapids audience. I am the host of todays discussion. Since 2003, the director of the Hauenstein Center for president ial studies named after colonel ralph hauenstein, whom we will be speaking of. I am joined on stage by two individuals for whom world war ii is no abstraction. To my right is the daughter of an ambassador. Her fa