Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/343

Rh and West, although that section had claimed precedence in morals. Fortunately the census is better authority than prejudiced writers in treating of the South. Certainly no unprejudiced person could say from this record that the people of the South lacked energy or thrift before the war. With a white population of only one-fourth, and only one- third including negroes, they were ahead in products, and had begun to climb up in those manufacturing industries claimed as showing peculiar energy and enterprise in our Northern brethren. Before taking up the rapid recuperation of the South, in contrast with the progress made at the North and West from 1880 (for really no start had been made before then), let us glance again for a moment at her enormous loss in property. As before stated, she had lost valued property amounting to over $5,000,000,000. "This vast sum is eight times as great as the combined capital of all the national banks in the United States, and is nearly as great as the aggregate capital invested in manufactures in the whole country. Blot out of existence in one night every manufacturing enterprise in the whole country, with all the capital employed, and the loss would not equal that sustained by the South as the result of the war." (Edmunds, 1896.)

In 1880, when the real start in recuperation was made, the real and personal property by the census was valued at $7,641,000,000; that of the entire country at $43, 642,000,000. This shows that the South had about 1 7 y 2 per cent of the total valuation of the entire country, against 44 per cent of that valuation twenty years previous, showing her greatly changed position as result of the war. Let us see what the South did in the decade 1880 to 1890, at first, almost alone. She increased the value of her property by $3,800,000,000, while New England and