The comedian John Mulaney has a pretty hilarious bit where we expresses his indignation towards his old college asking him for donations. This was after he had already paid $120,000 in tuition in 1999, which he claims was "more money than the Civil War cost."
How true is this claim? Most resources I've looked up chalk up the cost to be within the billions (like this Harvard article that puts the figure at $3.4 billion) but I reckon a lot of that is indirect costs and the economic fallout over the following years and such. So is there any angle or perspective (e.g. looking at direct costs only, inflation unadjusted, etc.) where Mulaney's claim that the Civil War cost less than $120,000 in 1999 dollars might be considered plausible?
I mean, the bit is still hilarious even if this statement is completely false, but I was just wondering.
For future reference, this would be a good candidate for the Short Answers to Simple Questions thread.
The direct expenditure of the US government on the war was exponentially greater than even John Mulaney' tuition. Pay for a private in the Union Army was 13$ a month, with 600,000-1,000,000 men under arms [it fluctuated] for 49 months. Accounting for officers and NCOs, pay alone [not including the cost of equipment, uniforms, supplies, and so on] probably exceeded 400 million 1861 dollars. Total costs at the height of the war approximated 2-3 million dollars a day.