9 0 The American Civil Wargarment industry, for example, the piece rate
declined from 17.5 cents to 8 cents per shirt
during the first three years of the conflict.
Women on single-family farms often struggled
to plant and harvest crops and look after
animals in the absence of husbands away at
war. The widow of a poor soldier - whether he
had been a farmer on marginal land or a
laborer - often found herself literally cast into
the streets. In 1863, despite a robust overall
economy, women accounted for more than
two-thirds of Philadelphia's vagrants.
Profiteers and speculators inevitably
emerged. Harper's Monthly noted the rise of
speculation as early as July 1861, quoting an
'eminent financier' who allegedly remarked
that the 'battle of Bull Run makes the
fortune of every man in Wall street who is
not a natural idiot.' Most loyal citizens
resented those who profited unduly from the
national crisis. Poorer northerners voiced
especially venomous complaints about new
fortunes built without honest labor. About
midway through the war, the New York
Herald, which reached a less affluent and
educated audience than most of the major
New York papers, undoubtedly touched a
responsive chord among its wide readership
with an unrestrained attack on the 'dash,
parade and magnificence of the new
Northern shoddy aristocracy.' 'They are
shoddy brokers in Wall Street,' insisted the
paper, 'or shoddy manufacturers of shoddy
goods, or shoddy contractors for shoddy
articles for a shoddy government. Six days in
a week they are shoddy business men. On
the seventh day they are shoddy Christians.'
The North financed the war with loans,
paper money and taxes. War bonds
generated about two-thirds of the required
revenues. Marketed to individuals as well as
to institutions, the bonds yoked people to
the war effort and set a precedent that the
great bond drives of the First and Second
World Wars would emulate. In response to a
shortage of hard money in the spring of
1862, Congress passed the Legal Tender Act,
which authorized issuance of $150 million in
Treasury notes (nearly $457 million of these
'greenbacks' were eventually printed). Made
legal tender and printed at a time when
Union armies seemed about to win the war,
this paper money held its value well. Taxes
accounted for roughly a fifth of Union
revenues and included an income tax of
3-10 percent as well as various excise taxes.
Without government-imposed rationing or
price controls, inflation peaked at about
80 percent (in the Second World War, with
controls, it reached 72 percent). The
northern economy proved fully up to the
task of producing guns and butter for the
Union armies and northern civilians.
Political battles during the first half of the
war revealed deep divisions in the northern
populace. Much of the disagreement focused
on war aims and emancipation. Within the
Republican Party, the radicals argued from the
outset that freedom for slaves should stand
alongside restoration of the Union as a major
goal. Hoping to appease slaveholding Border
States and attract the broadest possible support
from Democrats, Lincoln and other moderate
Republicans preferred to keep Union
paramount. Democrats almost universally
hated the idea of forcing emancipation on
slaveholders, insisting that they would fight
for the Union but not for black freedom.
As the war unfolded in 1861 and 1862,
the Republican-controlled Congress ended
slavery in the federal territories and the
District of Columbia, declared slaves owned
by Confederates subject to confiscation, and
guaranteed the freedom of thousands of
slaves who had escaped to areas controlled
by northern armies. By mid-July 1862,
Lincoln had decided emancipation was
necessary for northern victory, but he held
off issuing a preliminary proclamation until
Lee's retreat from Antietam. His final
proclamation of 1 January 1863 signalled
to the world that Union victory would
strike the shackles from all slaves in the
Confederacy (the proclamation did not
apply to the loyal Border States). Frederick
Douglass, a frequent critic of Lincoln,
approvingly commented that the
proclamation would give 'a new direction to
the councils of the Cabinet, and to the
conduct of the national arms.'