Population

Home income

Jobs

before: medical, education , textile

Cenus data civil war

Before

703,708

after: 690,000

Then

25,675

- after

We're farmers, soider, and merchants. Some industrial workers.

Role of money

With the loss of its cotton exports, the South was in big trouble. It had lost its banking system—which had been headquartered in New York—and held no gold or silver reserves. There were various forms of paper money printed by the states and even by some private banks, but overall people did not trust paper money, unless it was backed by gold. Without gold and without banks, the Confederacy did the only thing it could: it printed money. Lots and lots of money. However, it could not do much to collect taxes to support this huge printing effort because the Confederate Constitution forbade the central government from imposing taxes on the states, and left it up to each individual state to tax its citizens. As in the American Revolution decades before, states collected little money and, thus, the Confederacy was left nearly broke. The Confederate government levied taxes in 1864, but by that time it was too late to do much good. With money flooding the market, its value fell dramatically, and horrendous inflation dogged the Confederate war effort from beginning to end.