*********************** LOVE OR MONEY *************************
Early in 1864, the notorious guerrilla leader William C. Quantrill set out for Washington with a handful followers. His plan was to either kill or kidnap Abraham Lincoln. On May 10, in Kentucky, his men clashed with Federal troops.
Mortally wounded, the Ohio native who had earlier plundered Lawrence, Kansas, survived for twenty days. Moaning on his deathbed, Quantrill produced a pouch crammed with what remained of his ill-gotten fortune.
When Kate Clark, Quantrill's lover, visited the prisoner, he handed her everything he had -- $500 in gold. Kate did not wait for him to die; she took the first coach to St. Louis and used the gold to set up a brothel.
********************** THE PRIZE CASES ************************
>From 1861 to 1865, more than eleven hundred "prize" vessels, mostly blockade-runners, were captured by the U.S. Navy. Approximately one-fourth of them were lost at sea, but prize money awarded for those that made it into harbor exceeded $24 million.
Four vessels taken in the blockade were central to a vital and long-drawn legal contest. Owners of the "Amy Warwick," the "Crenshaw," the "Hiawatha," and the "Brilliante" sued the government over their seizure. War had not been declared, they pointed out, so the taking of the ships as prizes was illegal.
This issue reached the U.S. Supreme Court in February 1863, after having been delayed so that three newly appointed justices could be seated. The legality of the conflict that the president termed an insurrection was threatened by the charges of the attorneys representing the owners of the four prizes. The quartet of separate actions were labeled "the Prize Cases." Hearings concerning this issue resulted in the only significant Supreme Court ruling during the Civil War.
The justices concluded that although never declared by Congress, a de facto state of war began on Friday, April 19, 1861. Five days after Federal forces surrendered at Fort Sumter, the president made public a proclamation designed "to set on foot a blockade of the ports from South Carolina to Texas."
Soon extended northward along the Atlantic Coast, the blockade was initially unenforceable. Yet the date of its proclamation, taken as having launched a war that existed without having been declared, was named as the starting point of the conflict. This verdict was reached by a five-to-four decision. The dissenting justices argued that a state of war did not exist until July 13, 1861, when Congress recognized that war existed without having been declared.
Once April 19 was legally established as the date on which the conflict began, persons whose ships were seized as prizes could not get compensation. Neither could an agent or agency of the U.S. government be sued for losses incurred after that date.
****************** WORKING FOR A LIVING ***********************
At the start of the Civil War, civilian pay varied wildly, with geographical location and skills being major variables. Andrew Carnegie started as a bobbin boy in a Pennsylvania cotton mill and was paid $1.20 for a workweek of seventy-two or more hours.
Working in the sprawling Washington arsenal, a boy of twelve to sixteen years of age was paid, not by the hour, but by the piece. It took most of them a full day to put together 650 cartridges. As the need for ammunition grew more critical, the pay rose from about 60 cents a day to 75 cents. Much piecework was also done at the U.S. Patent Office. In 1861, a typical employee received 80 cents for the skilled and laborious job of sewing a book by hand.
With plans underway for establishing the Gettysburg National Cemetery, another big job had to be done piece-by-piece. Thousands of bodies were exhumed at an average rate of $1.69 each.
A man working as a civilian medical corpsman for Federal forces was likely to be paid $20.50 monthly. Both the remuneration and the risk compared favorably with those of Pennsylvania coal miners, some of whom were lucky to get $275 per year and others who received as little as 50 cents per day.
In many sections of North Carolina and Tennessee, poor whites were glad to work for $110 a year plus food and clothes. Along the northwestern frontier of the United States, pay was substantially higher. A dependable workman could command as much as $14 a month in cash.
In cities along the eastern seaboard, a laborer with few skills was often paid $20 per month. At Elmira, New York, a veteran grave digger received twice that amount.
Pay scales were almost always lower in the South than they were in the North. In New Orleans early in 1861, boys were lucky to earn 50 cents per day, while adult women often were paid 75 cents, and unskilled men drew $1 per day. Some skilled workers received as much as $9 for a six-day workweek.
Carpenters working on the "CSS Mississippi" in 1861 were ordered off the job because they had banded together and demanded the impossibly high wage of $4 a day.
With a large proportion of young men in uniform, contractors who furnished fuel for wood-burning locomotives boosted their workers' wages to $3 a day, occasionally paying even more than that.
Newspaper members of the Southern Associated Press found them- selves in the same bind by 1863. Fees for weekly reports of three thousand to four thousand words jumped to $12.
Veteran reporters and artists for widely circulated eastern newspapers fared even better. From the large dailies, they customarily drew $25 a week plus expenses. Winslow Homer was a conspicuous exception to the general rule. His work was in such demand that he was paid $60 per page.
A future major general, James A. Garfield, served for four prewar years as president of Ohio's Hiram College. In addition to his administrative duties, he lectured and taught penmanship. Garfield's salary was set by the college board of trustees at $80 per month.
Wnen the famous Pony Express was launched in 1860, it was destined to survive only eighteen months, falling victim to rapidly expanding telegraph networks. A rider who went through Indian country from St. Joseph, Missouri, to San Francisco in ten days was promised pay at the rate of $25 per month.
In New York, the 1862 annual report of the American Express Company reported that "two thousand men are in the regular employ of this company." The average salary was $600 per annum.
The Federal victory at Port Royal, South Carolina, made it easy for Northern entrepreneurs to come in and take possession of many large plantations. They soon discovered that they didn't know what to do with them. According to the New York Tribune, the new plantation owners promised to pay experienced overseers as much as $1,000 a year.
Salaries of the eight-man office working under the U.S. attorney general in 1861 ran to $20,500. Meanwhile, as confidential clerk to the commissioner of patents, Clara Barton was drawing $1,400 a year.
While the founder of the American Red Cross was working at the patent office, William Tecumseh Sherman took on the job of superintending the operation of the St. Louis Car Company. This system of street transportation paid the future general $2,000 annually for his services.
Four years earlier another future general became chief engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad. In that capacity, George B. McClellan was paid $3,000 a year for three years.
At war's end, P.G.T. Beauregard returned to his native New Orleans, financially ruined. After serving as president of a railroad, the renowned former Confederate general became super- intendent of the state lottery. In this position, he was paid $30,000 annually -- 20 percent more than Lincoln's wartime salary.
