Measures of War: A Quantitative Examination of the Civil War's Destructiveness in the Confederacy

• Published in: Civil War history Vol. 54; no. 1; pp. 35 - 62
• Main Author: Paskoff, Paul F
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kent The Kent State University Press 01.03.2008; Kent State University Press
• Subjects: American Civil War; Capital investments; Capital stock; Civil war; Civil War, 1861-1865; Disaster relief; Historical research; Ideology; Military aspects; Military policy; Politics; Reasoning; Social aspects; Technological change; United States; United States history; War; United States; Virginia; Texas
• ISSN: 0009-8078; 1533-6271; 1533-6271
• DOI: 10.1353/cwh.2008.0007

Characterized as the "great alibi" by Robert Penn Warren, and used by others to explain away manifold distortions in southern society, such reasoning merged smoothly with a Lost Cause ideology that sought to ennoble rebellion and make a virtue out of the seemingly enduring sacrifices offered in its service.2 Incorporated into this version of events were stories of depredations by Union forces, acting either in obedience to a policy of Schrecklichkeit, terror directed against civilians, or on the orders of individual commanders and junior officers. Analysis of data on capital investment, agricultural output, population, and income from the 1860 and 1880 federal census returns has led to the conclusion that, bad as the physical damage may have been, it was not a major reason for the South's economic woes during the decades following the war.6 Instead, they found other, more important causes: a general deterioration of property due to neglect during the war; a combination of cotton market forces, specifically global conditions of supply and demand; and the economic, social, and political upheaval in southern society following the war, as a consequence of emancipation.7 Today most economic historians subscribe to the cliometrical analysis of the causes of southern postwar economic retardation and its conclusion that the degree of physical destruction attributable to the war was not of long-term economic significance.8 As to the reasons for such damage, many historians agree that, though the Union army destroyed a great deal of southern public and private property, relatively little wanton destruction occurred.