Agriculture and the Confederacy by R. Douglas Hurt

Author:R. Douglas Hurt [Hurt, R. Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, Civil War Period (1850-1877), Social Science, Agriculture & Food
ISBN: 9781469620008
Google: 5fbcoQEACAAJ
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 2015-01-15T02:50:37+00:00

Chapter Six: Eastern Hard Times

In the Eastern Confederacy farmers and planters greeted 1864 with a feeling of despondency. In this last full year of the war, Union forces pressed General Lee’s army hard and made incremental territorial gains at great cost to both sides. Attrition wore away at Confederate armies. Farmers and planters now confronted even greater difficulty supplying soldiers and civilians with food due to disrupted production, impressment of provisions, worthless currency, and conscription. Feared by all, the year would bring the collapse of Confederate agricultural power. A Florida farmer wrote that “every body is tired and disgusted with the war.” A Virginian agreed: “We have many privations to encounter. . . . You do now ‘feel the war’ most basically in the way of living necessities [that] are at most fabulous prices.” Indeed, clear signs of distress could not be ignored. Lee did not have enough salted meat or fresh beef to feed his men beyond half rations, and the prospects for receiving cattle from the western counties in Virginia had become slim. His best prospects remained raiding enemy lines and stealing the needed livestock. Across the South many merchants accepted corn, wheat, fodder, and other agricultural products as payment for shoes, cloth, and newspaper subscriptions among other goods. With Confederate currency nearly worthless, a barter economy emerged among farmers and merchants. At the same time, planters held 3 million bales of cotton, of which the government’s Produce Loan Office owned about 10 percent of that amount. These planters reserved the right to raise cotton and sell it to whomever they pleased, or to hold it until peace—and high prices—returned.1

Confederate commissary agents and army officers continued to impress farm produce, paying with paper currency or, more likely, a piece of paper promising to pay, but always at lower prices than the farmers wanted. Georgia planters had become so distressed over conditions that they urged the governor to call a convention to determine a uniform and fair price for corn, pork, bacon, fodder, and other farm provisions for the duration of the war. Planters in Monroe County also met to establish reasonable prices for their produce. They agreed to sell corn for $2.50 per bushel, wheat for $5 per bushel, bacon for $1, and beef for 40 cents per pound, respectively. They considered these prices cheap and affordable for both government commissary agents and consumers. With land in the county averaging $10 per acre (little changed since 1860), with slave values averaging $1,000 per person, and with mules valued at $200 each, the agricultural situation remained sound, they believed, with one exception: government officials acquiring their produce for less than the price they deemed fair.2

Residents in Albany saw the situation differently. As one commented about food prices, “Our people have found out that a war is going on, and that they have regulated their prices accordingly.” By late February Georgia farmers sold corn for $3 per bushel, bacon for $2 per pound, and whiskey for $5 per gallon. In

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