“best and bravest” for eleven dollars a month
From the Richmond Daily Dispatch February 5, 1863:
To the Confederate Congress.
Repeal the whole exemption law passed October, 1862; you will thereby add 100,000 more men to the army. Your provise [proviso?] against extortion is not worth a cent. Go to our court-houses and churches, see the number of young and likely men staying behind our army privileged by that long exemption act. There is no positive need for one in a hundred of them. Exempt no man on account of his trade, occupation, or office, either State or Confederate. If he be so necessary at home, let him hire a substitute. Equalize the burthen of the war.–Make every person pay one halfe his net gains into the Confederate Treasury made in any manner since April1st, 1861. This war has been the lever of manufacturers and speculators to make fortunes out of the misfortunes of their country, while thousands of the best and bravest men we have have freely given up their blood and their lives in their country’s defence, many of them leaving poor and helpless wives and orphan children behind them. Shall those who staid behind, protected in making fortunes, refuse to give one-half their profits to their country made during this want [war?] Pay the President and every [eleven?] dollars per month and soldier’s rations, and recommend the several States to pay, from Governors down, the same. This will reduce our expenses many millions per annum — Every man, after paying his debts, shall invest one-half his money in Confederate bonds, bearing 5 per cent. interest. Pass and execute these laws, and in six months we will have our fifteen Southern States and as many Northwestern and Middle ones as we will let in, and an honorable peace.
A Farmer.
The farmer is probably exempt but not making a fortune on the food he is supplying his country. I’m assuming the part of this piece that mentioned the president is advocating paying all civil servants eleven dollars a month because that was privates’ pay until June 1864. According to bluegrass.net one of the ways exemption was unfair is that some states that opposed the draft added sham members to the lists of their civil servants:
Many Southerners, including the governors of Georgia and North Carolina, were vehemently opposed to the draft and worked to thwart its effect in their states. Thousands of men were exempted by the sham addition of their names to the civil servant rolls or by their enlistment in the state militias. One general described a militia regiment from one of these states as having “3 field officers, 4 staff officers, 10 captains, 30 lieutenants, and 1 private with a misery in his bowels.” Ninety-two percent of all exemptions for state service came from Georgia and North Carolina.
where Jeff Davis lived in Richmond
