Financing War

The Waste in War

Give me the money that has been spent in the war, and I will purchase every foot of land on the globe. I will clothe every man, woman and child in an attire that Kings and Queens might be proud of. I will build a school-house on every hill-side and every valley over the earth. I will supply that school-house with a competent teacher. I will build an academy in every town, and endow it – a college in every State, and fill it with able professors. I will crown every hill with a church, consecrated with the promulgation of the gospel of peace. I will support in its pulpit an able teacher of righteousness: so that on every Sabbath morning the chime on one hill shall answer to the chime on another, around the earth’s broad circumference, and the voice of prayer and the song of praise shall ascend as one universal offering to Heaven.

1846.04.03

A Theatre of Immense Cost

The battle field is a theatre of immense cost, for the exhibition of crime upon a grand scale.

1846.05.29

A Beautiful Business

Cost of the Mexican War—The Washington correspondent of the New York Tribune says: - “Were the war to be brought to a close forthwith, the best judges compute the aggregate of all its expenses, to say nothing of the thousands of our brave officers and soldiers who have been slain in battle, and the thousands that have perished by sickness on the Rio Grande, at no less than one hundred and fifty millions of dollars.

“This sum in silver, it is computed, would load fourteen hundred six-hourse wagons, and would require a train of teams to draw it more than twenty-one miles long!

“All this expended in carrying on the Mexican war thus far, under the management of this economical, this self-styled “Democratic” Administration, when it is generally believed that we could have obtained Peace, California, and the Rio Grande for a boundary for a sum not exceeding ten millions of dollars. A beautiful business.

1846.11.20

National Debt

Foundation of  National Debt –  A bill providing for these issue of twenty-three millions of Treasury Notes passed the House on the 24th [ult.], and in all probability pass the Senate. They are to bear an annual interest of six per cent., and to be funded if necessary – that is, a permanent national debt is to be created. If the war should continue for a year or two longer, the different issue of Treasury Notes, consolidated after the English fashion, will furnish a pretty large sized millstone to hang about the neck of Labor in the present generation, and perhaps leave something of a balance for posterity.

—Western Citizen

1847.02.19

Direct Taxation
for War Expenses

The people must pay these villainous war expenses. We say, then they should be justly apportioned among the States and upon the people according to their property. This, can only be done by direct taxation. “Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the States, in proportion to the numbers of all free persons.” That is the Constitution, and we hold the Slaveocrats to it. The doctrine of the whigs and democrats to the contrary are outrageous.

This war was got up for the slaveholders, for their especial benefit – let them not then creep out from under its burdens, and throw them upon the North. We hope the Freemen of the north are not sufficiently servile to bear this. The South have their representatives upon their slaves upon the three-fifths principle – let them pay taxes upon the same principle. Let the representation and taxation go together.

We know that this rule will not suit the wealthy men of the North. Such men join the slaveholders of the South. Their interest is, to throw the expenses from property upon persons that they may escape the burthen. But this rule will suit the men of moderate means at the North, and it will suit all the poor of the north – it will suit the laboring classes of the North. It is exactly suited to free labor everywhere. Men should pay according to their means, and not according to what they consume, as they do under the tariff system, and not according to what they consume, as they do under the tariff system.

Were men to pay for the cost of this robbery and piracy upon Mexico in proportion to their ability to pay, we should find the rich men at the North not quite so free to involve the men of moderate property and the poor in this guilty war and its amazing expenditures. Almost all rich men are ready to vote men and money for the war – to enlist themselves as officers, and prosecute the war with vigor – but that is the last thing they would do, if they were obliged to pay the cost of their bloodguiltiness, according to their property. If they will have Mexico destroyed from the face of the earth, as they are now destroying her, then we protest against throwing the expense of of that monstrous wrong upon the poor of the North. They would quick see in such case that justice and mercy was the highest expediency; if men paid their expenses in proportion to their ability. Let the national expenses be paid as our State expenditures are paid – as our town and country and school district expenses are paid – that is the true method.

—True American

1847.07.30