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The Northern Civil Service: 1861-1865
- Civil War History
- The Kent State University Press
- Volume 11, Number 4, December 1965
- pp. 351-369
- 10.1353/cwh.1965.0039
- Article
- Additional Information
THE NORTHERN CIVIL SERVICE: 1861-1865 Paul P. Van Riper and Keith A. Sutherland In our preoccupation with the military events of the Civil War, there has been a tendency to ignore the civilian base in general and its personnel aspects in particular. We know from a recent study that at the height of the war the Confederacy utilized, on a regularly paid basis, the surprisingly large number of about seventy thousand civilians.1 In the North, to use Carl Russell Fish's phrase, the civil patronage "was enormously increased by the war."2 But the extent of this increase and its nature—in categories of employees and agencies of employment— we do not know with any precision. Existing estimates, of which there are few, vary widely and all are suspect. For perspective, however, let us consider them briefly. First, there are the official sources. The Bureau of the Census' Historical Statistics provides only the figure 36,672 for "paid civilian employment of the federal government" in 1861, and 51,020 in 1871.3 For the intervening years the Annual Reports of the United States Civil Service Commission tell us that "the executive civil service" totaled 49,212 in 18634 and the "whole numbers of employes[sic] in the public service" was "over 60,000" in 1867.5 1 Paul P. Van Riper and Harry N. Scheiber, "The Confederate Civil Service," Journal of Southern History, XXV (1959), 450. 2 Carl Russell Fish, The Civil Service and the Patronage (New York, 1905), p. 171. Fish gives no actual figures for the period. 3 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1957, Ser. Y241 (Washington, I960), p. 710. The figures are given "as of June 30." But this seems hardly possible, for both the legislation creating the Official Register, from which the data are taken, and the 1861 Register itself refer to September 30 as the date of the listings. *U.S. Civil Service Commission, Twenty-Seventh Annual Report, 1910 (Washington , 1911), p. 155. This document refers, in turn, to a table from the preface of the Official Register oí 1909. Perusal of the Register for 1909 shows that the figures represent "approximate total names" in the Register for each of the years indicated, including 1863. This figure for 1863 therefore quite clearly contains many names of uniformed military personnel. See Official Register , 1909, I (Washington, 1909), 9. 5 U.S. Civil Service Commission, Ninth Annual Report, 1892 (Washington, 1893), p. 237. Here the Commission says that "in 1867 the official register contained over 60,000" employees. 351 352CIVIL WAR HISTORY The data on which these estimates rest are all based on name counts in various editions of the Official Register of the United States.6 The Bureau of the Census recognizes, for example, that its historical series on "paid civilian employment of the federal government" does not include "mechanics and other workmen at arsenals and navy yards . . . prior to 1881."7 The Official Registers of the day simply did not list them. The Civil Service Commission is even more precise about the inadequacies of its estimates. In its report on the "growth of the federal service," made in 1892, the Commission notes that "a portion of the force of the civil service, consisting of laborers and others temporarily engaged, of agents in the secret service, and of others paid out of lump' or contingent appropriations, is not borne upon the Department rolls."8 This was true throughout most of the nineteenth century and the Register is accordingly deficient. In addition, since all of the Official Registers through the period here under consideration also contain the names of all military officers and cadets as well as of civil employees , any civil estimates based on total name counts in the Register are to that degree incorrect. Finally, any estimate of civil employment in the North alone based on names in the Official Register for 1861 is inaccurate to the extent that it includes Federal employees in the seceded states, many of whom, though still listed in die 1861 Register, were, by the reporting date ( September 30, 1861 ), employees of the Confederate government by its formal...