Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/289

Rh judge for itself of the infraction of the Constitution and the mode of redress; we have given up the right to frame our own domestic institutions. We fought for all these and we lost in that controversy."

It is difficult to estimate the pecuniary loss of the South in the war, but it may be partially estimated by comparing her conditions in 1860 and 1870 according to the United States census. In 1860 the total assessed value of property in the United States was $12,000,000,000. The assessed value in the South was $5,200,000,000 (44 per cent), and at that time the South was increasing in wealth faster than any other portion of the United States. The census of 1870 showed the assessed valuation in the South to be $3,000,000,000 only, a decline of $2,200,000,000 since the census of 1860, and the property of the South decreasing in value instead of increasing. This, too, in face of the fact that the total assessed value in the whole country was $14,170,000,000, an increase of $4,370,000,000 in the North, showing that the North had gotten rich during the war while the South was impoverished.

Though the valuation of property by census is used to estimate the values officially, it is always considerably less than the real value. The loss of the South is only partially shown by the census. If we consider what was spent by the South to carry on the war, the destruction of property during the war, and the other losses incident to so great and complete a failure, it is estimated that the total loss of the South will not fall below $5,000,000,000. Alexander H. Stephens, in his history of the United States, says the war cost both sides $8,000,000,000, three-fourths of the assessed value of property in the whole United States at the beginning of the war. When we consider that the war debt incurred by the United States government alone was $3,000,000,000, the estimate given is less than a reasonable one, for the cost to the North in actual loss and expense in prosecuting the