The Government Expenditures

The country was some time ago informed on what seemed to be “reliable authority,” that the expenditures of the Government were fully three millions of dollars per day. – A great deal of astonishment and some apprehension was felt at the statement.  People were justly puzzled and alarmed at the idea of the nation plunging into debt at the rate of one thousand millions of dollars per year.  It now appears that the average expenditures of the Government have not been one million of dollars per day.  The New York Commercial Advertiser says of a speech made on Tuesday, by Mr. Dawes of Massachusetts.  He showed on authority which is entirely trustworthy, that the whole expenses of the present Administration, and for a period of fourteen months and eighteen days, amounted only to $441,000,000, which was three millions less than one million per day on the average.  The entire indebtedness including the seventy millions bequeathed by the last Administration was $482,796,145, on the 22nd of this month.  The speech of Mr. Dawes was in reply to Voorhees of Indiana, who made out that our National debt would soon amount to six thousand million dollars.

Mr. DAWES said:

The expenditures of all the departments of the Government outside of the war and navy, since the Administration came into power are as follows, For the Interior Department, Indians and pensions to the 22nd of May $8,681,860, civil list, foreign intercourse and miscellaneous $21,635,010, making a total of nearly $25,367,000.  The expenditures of the War during that time amounted to $374,172,000 and the navy during the same time $42,055,000, or a total of $416,227,000.  The average daily expenditures in the War Department have been $897,295, and those of the navy $100,852 making the average in both departments $998,147.  No requisitions are unpaid, excepting a few thousand dollars for illegality or disloyalty.  The payments last Thursday were only $864,917 yet the day after when the paymasters came in the expenditures were $2,000,000 but on Saturday only $500,000.  So the expenditures of the government up to the 22nd of May inst. in round numbers, were for the military $374,000,000, navy, $42,000,000, all other expenditures, $25,000,000 – a total of $441,000,000.  From the 4th of March, 1861, till the 22nd of May the public debt including $70,000,000 old debt bequeathed by Buchanan, amounted in the aggregate on Friday last to $481,796,145.  Mr. Dawes run [sic] a parallel between the expenditures under the former administration and the present showing as to the civil list, this administration has been far more honest and economical than that.

The expenditures of the Government have been greater in the past than they will be in the future.  Vast sums of money have been laid out in ships and arms.  The creation of the enormous artillery force which is now so effective an arm of our military department involved lavish outlays of money.  Our coast expeditions have cost us extravagantly.  Arms have been procured at great cost.  In fact we were not prepared for war, and have been obliged to make up for our want of preparation.  We have now made our permanent investments in war material and the current expenditures will be diminished.  The estimate that the war was costing us three millions per day, was made just at the time that hundreds of vessels were charted for the transportation of McClellan’s army from Alexandria to Fortress Monroe and while an immense fleet of steamers were conveying Gen. Grant’s army up the Tennessee river the great cost of these vessels of course swelled the aggregate daily expenditure greatly, but yet the three million estimate was much too large even for that time.

– Published in The Burlington Weekly Hawk-Eye, Burlington, Iowa, Saturday, June 7, 1862, p. 1