Turn we now to examine the estimate made by General Adams and quoted at
the beginning of this paper.
But first let me say that I quite agree with him when he says that if
the South had as many as 600,000 men in arms she ought to have been
unconquerable, and probably would have been so, but for the United
States Navy.
That opinion was expressed by a distinguished Southern writer, Dr.
Bledsoe, Assistant Secretary of War, in an article written about forty
years ago. He said: "The decisive circumstance which robbed the South of
the defensive advantage of its wide territory was the superiority of its
enemy upon the water." All the water front of the Confederate States was
"an exposed frontier," both ocean coasts and navigable rivers. The best
authorities in the South have maintained the same view with practically
unanimity; hence, in differing from Mr. Adams I am not influenced by a
desire to account for our defeat by the overwhelming force of numbers
opposed to us, but by the desire to establish the truth of history.