Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat (review)

BOOK REVIEWS91 been their final defeat, however, because they favored the stronger Senate version, which specifically enfranchised all black males, instead of the House version, which was stated in the negative and which Southern states circumvented by the turn of the century. Religion and the Radical Republican Movement, 1860-1870 divides the religious spectrum into radicals and conservatives. Very seldom is a person identified as a religious moderate, although the radicals are at times divided between ultraradicals and radicals. Such a bifurcation of the religious spectrum will not satisfy all historians, but even skeptics will find this examination of religion and Radical Republicans rewarding. Together, these books place religion at the heart of the mid-nineteenth century controversy over slavery, freedom, and the Civil War. Howard richly shows through his sources how contemporaries lived out their religious values in their politics. Having read these books, historians will have a much better picture of how dynamic and vital Northern religion was during this period. Peter C. Murray Methodist College Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat. By Douglas B. Ball. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991. Pp. 329. $29.95.) The author of this detailed and well-researched study finds most of the explanations for the South's defeat inadequate. Regarding the Union, the belief that superior resources and numbers would practically assure victory against a weaker adversary has been cast in doubt by the Vietnam War. Other reasons (faulty Southern military strategy, fears of centralized government, indiscipline, provincialism, etc.) are also found wanting. Instead, Ball is convinced that the defeat "was to a significant degree, attributable to the inadequate management of the Confederate finances and economy" (1), a factor that recent scholars are chided either for rejecting (Beringer et al.) or for treating superficially (McPherson). In pursuing his argument, the author plunges into the intricacies of Confederate finance with impressive methodologies, including quantification , economic theory and analysis, comparative history and the hypothetical alternative, although, ironically, the ultimate failure is judged to be a human one: the inept leadership of President Jefferson Davis (who was, nevertheless, "probably the best man available" [26]), his treasury secretary, Christopher G. Memminger, and the Congress. South Carolina's choice for treasurer, Memminger was a particular disaster. Ample literature on public finance from colonial times forward was ignored by the leadership as were the economic theorists; so also was "The Wisdom of John C. Calhoun," who as a nationalist in 1816 expounded "what could have been. . .an almost made to order program 92CIVIL WAR history for the Confederacy in 1861" (49). Meanwhile, the leaders proceeded without a plan, a strategy, or an analysis of the South's predicament. They antagonized Europeans with the cotton embargo, wasted funds by not establishing a centralized purchasing system overseas, failed early on to float European bonds or buy local cotton, overestimated customs receipts, rejected a government-sponsored steamship line to Liverpool and the West Indies while neglecting to control private blockade runners, and generally pursued laissez-faire policies in the belief that the war would be short. Debt and currency management and fiscal policy were also bungled, often because of inept timing with too little too late. Indeed, Memminger 's failures "materially contributed to Confederate defeat" (119), especially the loss of the Mississippi Valley, because the Trans-Mississippi forces, unpaid and demoralized, deserted in droves at the very time Grant was planning the Vicksburg campaign. Likewise, the secretary's refusal to get control of the limited specie supply in the hands of bankers caused New Orleans' ironclad shipbuilding program to founder. Neither the Confederacy nor the navy had hard money to pay striking workers, who refused to accept treasury bills. Without ironclads, New Orleans became easy prey to Farragut's naval flotilla. So also did much of the specie in that city. Memminger's aversion to taxation was also harmful, although the general hatred of protective tariffs and the large slaveholders' "selfish and short-sighted" refusal "to pay their fair share" also crippled the Confederacy's tax program (217). The result was disasterous inflation. Throughout, the author draws frequent and usually invidious comparisons between the inept handling of the Confederacy's finances and the sounder programs of the federal government...