Jim Rhetta on “Paying for the Civil War”
A very significant and invariably overlooked component to any conflict is that fact that it has to be paid for. Historian focus on tactical and strategic decisions and actions and commonly ignore the revenue sources necessary to maintain an effectively military force. Two examples will be presented of cases where Nations ran out of funds to continue a conflict, and the impacts of one to this day.
This presentation will cover how both sides funded their forces in the Civil War from the only three sources still available to nations today – Taxes, Bonds, and Printing Money. Both sides used a mix of these three sources in different ratios and faced social and economic limitations on how much could be extracted from each funding source. The amount of funds raised and management of the National economies involved had a strong correlation to the tactical results of the Civil War.