The Home Front
The Home Front
The Civil War separated families in unprecedented numbers and freed women to assume new roles. With the departure of men into the military, women entered occupations previously reserved for men in factories, shops, and especially, civil service, where women took jobs as clerks, bookkeepers, and secretaries. A number of women also served as spies like Rose O’Neal Greenhow, a Confederate spy in Washington, and even as soldiers like Albert Cashier, whose real name was Jennie Hodgers.
But, it was as nurses that women achieved particular prominence. Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton were among thousands of women, North and South, that carried supplies to soldiers and nursed wounded men on the battlefield and in hospitals. Through organizations like the Christian Commission, formed by the North’s YMCAs, and the U.S. Sanitary Commission, one of whose founders was Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to earn a medical degree, women agents distributed medical supplies, organized hospitals, passed out Bibles and religious tracts, and offered comfort to wounded or dying soldiers.
The Confederacy Begins to Collapse
By early 1863, the Civil War had begun to cause severe hardship on the Southern home front. Not only was most of the fighting taking place in the South, but as the Union blockade grew more effective and the South’s railroad system deteriorated, shortages grew increasingly common. In Richmond, food riots erupted in April 1863. A war department clerk wrote: “I have lost twenty pounds, and my wife and children are emaciated.”
The Confederacy also suffered rampant inflation. Fearful of undermining support for the war effort, Confederate leaders refused to raise taxes to support the war. Instead, the Confederacy raised funds by selling bonds and simply printing money without gold or silver to back it. The predictable result was skyrocketing prices. In 1863, a pair of shoes cost $125 and a coat, $350. A chicken cost $15 and a barrel of flour $275.
Meanwhile, the slave system began to collapse as thousands of slaves escaped behind Northern lines. Slaves played a critical role in their own liberation. Southern slaves deserted plantations and fled to Union lines. Slaves staged a few small insurrections during the war as the slave system itself began to unravel. Planters were stunned to see trusted house slaves and field drivers lead field hands in deserting to the Union army.
Defeatism and a loss of will began to spread across the Confederacy. Military defeats suggested divine disfavor. Hardships on the home front generated discontent within the ranks.
In the South, the imposition of a military draft in April 1862 produced protests that this was “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight.” Although the law made all able-bodied men ages 18 through 35 liable for three years’ service, the draft law allowed draftees to pay a substitute to serve for him (the North adopted a similar draft law in March 1863). Further aggravating tension was enactment of the “Twenty Negro Law” in October 1862 which exempted one white man from the draft on every plantation with 20 or more slaves.
The Death Toll
Almost as many soldiers died during the Civil War as in all other American wars combined. Union combat deaths totaled 111,904, another 197,388 died of disease, 30,192 in prison, and 24,881 as a result of accidents. Another 277,401 Union solders were wounded. Confederate casualties were nearly as high, with approximately 94,000 combat deaths, 140,000 deaths by disease and 195,000 men wounded.
Over half of all deaths were caused by disease. As a result of poor sanitation, primitive medical practices, and contaminated water supplies, the average regiment lost half its fighting strength from disease during the first year.
How Do We Know?
How Many Men Died in the Civil War?
For a century after the Civil War, historians agreed that 618,222 men died in the Civil War, 360,222 from the North and 258,000 from the South. New research, published in 2012, raises the number by twenty percent, to 750,000.
Where did these various numbers come from?
The original figures came from two Union veterans, William F. Fox and Thomas Leonard Livermore. In an 1889 volume, Fox calculated Union deaths by reviewing every muster list, battlefield report, and pension record. He calculated the number of Confederate deaths by reviewing every after-action report. In 1900, Livermore added an estimated number of Confederates that probably died of disease, assuming that deaths by disease were about equal among Union and Confederate soldiers.
In making his 2012 calculations, J. David Hacker, a demographic historian, looked at death rates during the 1850s and 1870s, and, not surprisingly found a sharp spike in male mortality during the 1860s. That spike provided him with a rough estimate of war deaths: Between 650,000 and 850,000 men. His calculations meant that the war left an additional 30,000 widows and 90,000 orphans.
The Second American Revolution
The Civil War was accompanied by a vast expansion of federal powers. To help pay for the war, Congress enacted the federal government’s first income tax and inheritance tax.
During the war, the Republican-controlled Congress enacted a series of measures that carried long-term consequences for the future. The Homestead Act of 1862 provided public land free to pioneers who agreed to farm the land for five years. The Morrill Act of 1862 helped states establish agricultural and technical colleges. Congress also authorized construction of the nation’s first transcontinental railroad.
The Civil War brought vast changes to the nation’s financial system. Before the Civil War, the federal government did not issue paper money. Instead, paper notes were issued by more than 1,500 state banks in 1860, which issued more than 10,000 different kinds of currency.
To end this chaotic system and to impose federal regulation on the financial system, Congress enacted two important pieces of legislation. The Legal Tender Act of 1862 authorized the federal government to issue paper money. Because these notes were printed on green paper, they became known as greenbacks. The National Bank Act of 1863 created the nation’s first truly national banking system.
As finally adopted by Congress, the National Banking Act of 1863 chartered national banks which met certain requirements, made the notes of national banks legal tender for all public and private debts, and levied a tax of two percent on state bank notes, which gradually increased over time. By imposing a tax on state bank notes, the federal government forced state banks to join the federal system. By 1865, national banks had 83 percent of all bank assets in the United States. After 1870, interestingly, state banks made a comeback. They avoided the tax on their bank notes by issuing checks.