The distinguished soldier and critic whose name appears on the title
page argues, as do various other Northern critics, that the usual
Southern estimate of the strength of the Confederate army is too small
by half. This conclusion is supported, they contend, both by the census
of 1860, according to which there were at the very beginning of the war
between the States nearly a million men in the Southern States of
military age, and by the number of regiments of the several armies, as
shown by the muster rolls of the Confederate army, captured on Lee's
retreat from Richmond, and now stored among the archives in Washington.
This second line of argument has been developed, among others, by two
well-known military critics, Colonel Wm. F. Fox, in his monumental work
entitled "_Regimental Losses in the Civil War_" (who concludes that the
Southern Armies contained the equivalent of 764 regiments, of ten
companies each), and by Thomas L. Livermore, Colonel of the 18th New
Hampshire Volunteers, in his laborious and painstaking monograph,
"Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America," published in 1901.
Both these authors have had the advantage of studying the Muster Rolls
of the Confederate army just alluded to, but General Marcus J. Wright,
of the Adjutant General's Office, War Department, Washington, writes me
that he knows of no Southern man who has ever examined these Rolls,
although General T. W. Castleman of Louisiana has recently received
permission to copy the Louisiana Rolls. Colonel Walter H. Taylor, of
General Lee's staff was also permitted to examine some of the official
returns of Lee's Army.
Although the author of the following pages has not had the opportunity
of studying those precious Muster Rolls, he hopes that he has been able
to show that the thesis maintained by the distinguished critics just
mentioned rests on no sufficient foundation and ought to be rejected by
careful thinkers.
The main points of my counter argument are these: 1. The lack of arms
limiting the enrolment of soldiers the first year of the war. 2. The
loss of one-fourth of our territory by the end of the first year. 3. The
loss of control of the Trans-Mississippi in 1863-4. 4. The enormous
number exempted from enrolment for every sort of State duty, and for
railroads and new manufacturing establishments made necessary by the
blockade of our ports. 5. The opposition of some of the State
governments to the execution of the Conscript law. 6. The comparative
failure of the Conscript law. 7. The disloyalty of a part of our
population. 8. The necessity of creating not only an army of fighters,
but also an industrial army, and an army of civil servants out of the
male population liable for military duty.
The character of the evidence available precludes a precise estimate of
the actual strength of the Confederate army. As Colonel Walter H.
Taylor, Lee's Adjutant General, says in a letter addressed to the
author, "I regret to have to say that I know of no reliable data in
support of any precise number, and have always realized that it must
ever be largely a matter of conjecture on our side."