It seems to be overlooked by General Adams, Colonel Livermore, and other
persons, in their estimates of the population available for military
purposes, that the Confederate States' Government had not only to
organize an army, but also to establish extensive manufacturing plants
for the equipment of the army; for clothing, for harness, for saddles,
for guns, powder, and ordnance; even for mining the ore which had to be
worked up into iron for the Tredegar works and other similar plants
within the limits of the Confederacy.
Again, a large contingent of men had to be retained as railway servants
and government clerks, and for purposes of agriculture, for it must be
remembered that not one in ten of the soldiers in the Confederate army
was an owner of slaves, and therefore a very large proportion of the
agriculture of the country had to be carried on by white men. It is also
overlooked that the complicated machinery of civilized government had to
be maintained in eleven States with the necessary officers and clerks
pertaining to their administration. (This is one of the particulars in
which the case of the Boer Republic differs so radically from that of
the Southern Confederacy that the comparison between the two is quite
illusory.) If, as General Adams insists, "the whole male arms-bearing
was thus put in arms," one cannot but wonder who did all these things
just enumerated?
When these things are taken into consideration, and the figures I shall
present are carefully examined, it will be seen that to have put
600,000 men into the armies of the South--men serving with the
colors--instead of being discreditable to the patriotism of the Southern
people was in reality a great achievement.
One of the most accomplished English military critics of our time,
Colonel G. F. R. Henderson, author of the Life of Stonewall Jackson,
writes on this aspect of the subject as follows:
"Not only had the South to provide from her seven millions of white
population an army larger than that of Imperial France, but from a
nation of agriculturists she had to provide another army of craftsmen
and mechanics to enable the soldiers to keep the field. For guns and gun
carriages, powder and ammunition, clothing and harness, gunboats and
torpedoes, locomotives and railway plant, she was now dependent on the
hands of her own people and the resources of her own soil. The
organization of these resources scattered over a vast extent of
territory, was not to be accomplished in the course of a few months, nor
was the supply of skilled labor sufficient to fill the ranks of her
industrial army." (Life of Stonewall Jackson, II, 253.)
Upon this striking passage one or two remarks may be appropriate. The
distinguished critic tells us most truly that the South, by reason of
her isolated situation, had to provide two armies,--an army of fighters
and an army of workers. He might have said she had to provide three
armies; for besides the industrial army and the army of soldiers, she
had to provide an army of civil servants to man the offices necessary to
carry on not only the Confederate States government, but also the
government of eleven separate States, with their highly differentiated
organizations.
Our author calls attention to the fact that the fighting army of the
South was larger than that of Imperial France. Let me add that, even if
the Southern army numbered no more than 650,000 men, it was nearly
double the army of Imperial Rome in the reign of Augustus. Radiating
from the golden milestone in the forum to every point of the compass,
that vast empire extended from the Pillars of Hercules to the banks of
the Euphrates, and from the coasts of Britain to the borders of the
great African desert. It comprehended among its subjects at least an
hundred divers races, numbering about 85,000,000 people; and yet the
historian tells us that the entire armies of the empire, exclusive of
some battalions maintained in Rome itself, did not exceed 340,000
men,[3] there being at the time among the _citizens_, exclusive of the
_subjects_, 5,984,072 males of military age.
I have quoted Colonel Henderson's admiring comment on the size of the
army the South was able to put in the field. In doing so I have not
forgotten that he estimates that army at 900,000. But his judgment upon
that point loses much of its weight when we observe that in two distinct
passages in his Life of Stonewall Jackson he gives seven millions as the
white population of the South, instead of five millions, as it actually
was. This error may serve to show how easy it is for a foreign critic to
be mistaken upon a question of statistics. Apart from the influence upon
his judgment of his error as to the size of the white population, it is
evident, from the passage quoted above, that Henderson included in the
estimate of 900,000 many thousands of men detailed for the various
industries he enumerates.[4]
I submit then that these preliminary considerations quite do away with
the presumption that an army of only six hundred thousand men serving
with the colors, would have been unworthy of the devotion or the
patriotism of the Southern people, or inadequate to what might have
been expected of a nation of five millions of whites.
In other words, we enter upon our argument without any reasonable
presumption against the conclusion which it is our purpose to defend.
Whoever will fairly consider that the South had to provide out of her
indigenous male population of military age, a fighting army, an
industrial army, and an army of civil servants, will not be surprised if
it shall appear from the evidence available that she was not able to
muster in battle array more than six hundred thousand men.