The Home Front: 1861 to 1865The Price of Things |
What did Jefferson Davis look like? What did he do? |
Anyone who claimed the rich and powerful lived too well only had to take one look at Jefferson Davis to see something different. He was the most powerful man in the Confederacy and at one time he had owned 120 slaves, but by the midpoint of the war he was a haggard man, old before his time. Anyone could see the toll the war had taken on him; at the same time they could feel his resolve.

The Confederate States of America created its own monetary system and printed paper money by fiat. As it did so, inflation became a problem for the Southern economy.