Now in making the calculation previously alluded to, it appears to me
that our gallant and generous friend has overlooked some important
considerations bearing on the problem discussed.
1.--During the first year of the war the Confederate Government could
not have availed itself of even half a million of men for its armies,
inasmuch as it was utterly unable to arm and equip them. The supply of
arms and of artillery was utterly inadequate for even half that
number.[7] As the war progressed the muskets, the sabers, the cannon,
used in the Confederate army, if examined, would have been found to have
been in larger part captured on the field of battle. Pompey the Great is
reported to have said, "I have only to stamp with my foot to raise
legions from the soil of Italy." Had Jefferson Davis been able by a
stamp of his foot to summon a million men to the Confederate colors in
the spring of 1861, what advantage would it have been? He could not have
armed them, even if he could have fed and clothed and transported them.
As General Adams himself has said: "The strength of an army is measured
and limited not by the census number of men available, but by the means
at hand of arming, equipping, clothing, feeding, and transporting those
men."
2.--General Adams appears to have overlooked the fact that by May, 1862,
the Northern armies were in permanent occupation of middle and west
Tennessee, nearly the whole of Louisiana, part of Florida, the coasts of
North and South Carolina, southeastern Virginia, much of northern
Virginia, and practically the whole of that part of Virginia known as
Western Virginia. The population thus excluded from the support of the
Confederacy may be estimated conservatively at 1,200,000, leaving
3,800,000 to bear the burden of the war. Hence the estimate of the
arms-bearing population in 1862, when the real tug began, would be not
1,000,000, but 760,000. Of this number, one-fifth, as General Adams
admits, would be regularly exempt, i.e., 152,000; and many thousands
more were detailed for various branches of industry. Doubtless during
the first year thousands entered the Confederate army from this
territory--a fair proportion of the 340,000 on the muster rolls in
March, 1862; but the conscript law could not operate--never did
operate--in this fourth of the Southern territory.
3.--The seceded States (including West Va.) furnished the Northern
armies, according to the returns of the War Department, 86,000 men. I do
not remember any mention of this by Mr. Adams, though he alludes to the
statement that 316,000 men were furnished by Southern States to the
Union armies, including the Border States, which did not secede. (The
records of the War Department show a total of white soldiers from all
Southern States, including Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia,
Delaware and District of Columbia, of 295,481.)
4.--It must be remembered that while the unanimity with which the
Southern people supported the war has perhaps never been surpassed in so
large a revolution, yet there was a large element of disloyalty,
especially in the mountainous regions of the South. For instance, in the
Valley of Virginia there were large numbers of Quakers and Dunkards, all
opposed to war. There were also in that region the numerous descendants
of the Hessian prisoners, who were not in sympathy with us. The number
of Union men in the South who did not take up arms has been estimated at
80,000.
5.--It must also be remembered, as Dr. Bledsoe said in his article in
the _Southern Review_, that "there was also a large element of baser
metal,--men who begrudged the sacrifice for liberty and shirked danger."
6.--General Adams says that the Confederate States passed the most
drastic conscript law on record--which may be true; but he is mistaken
in supposing that this law was successfully executed. Thus, General Cobb
writes, December, 1864, from Macon, Georgia, to the Secretary of War:
"I say to you that you will never get the men into the service who ought
to be there, through the conscript camp. It would require the whole army
to enforce the conscript law if the same state of things exist
throughout the Confederacy which I know to be the case in Georgia and
Alabama, and I may add Tennessee." (W. R., series iv, vol. iii, p. 964.)
Again, H. W. Walters, writing from Oxford, Mississippi, to the
Department, December, 1864, says: "I regard the conscript department in
Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi as almost worthless." Yet again
General T. H. Holmes reports to Adjutant-General Cooper as to North
Carolina, April 29, 1864: "After a full and complete conference with
Colonel Mallett, commandant of conscription, ... I am pained to report
that there is much disaffection in many of the counties, which,
emboldened by the absence of troops, are being organized in some places
to resist enrolling officers." And General Kemper reports, December 4,
1864, that in his belief there were 40,000 men in Virginia out of the
army between the ages of eighteen and forty-five. (W. R., series iv,
vol. iii, p. 855.)
In support of his thesis that the whole military population was enrolled
in the Confederate armies Colonel Livermore quotes a letter of General
Lee, urging the necessity of "getting out our entire arms-bearing
population in Virginia and North Carolina." But this letter, written
October 4, 1864, six months before the surrender, is strong evidence
that _up to that time_ the stringent conscript laws had failed to get
out even in Virginia and North Carolina, "the entire arms-bearing
population." (Livermore, "Numbers and Losses," p. 17.)
Colonel Livermore quotes another letter of General Lee, dated September
26, 1864, in confirmation of his opinion that the conscription laws were
thoroughly enforced, in which General Lee speaks of the "imperious
necessity of getting all our men subject to military duty in the field,"
and adds, "_I get no additions._" (Id. p. 17.) Is that statement
consistent with the rigid and successful enforcement of the conscript
law? Is it not rather the most conclusive evidence that it was not
successfully enforced? Or is my Bœotian wit so dull that I cannot see
the point? If so, I pray to be enlightened![8]
The statement is often made that the Confederate Conscription embraced
all white males between 16 and 60 years of age. This is an error. The
first Act, April 16, 1862, embraced men between 18 and 35 years; the
second, of Sept. 27, 1862, men between 18 and 45 years; the third and
last, of February 17, 1864, men between 17 and 50. Both General Adams
and Colonel Livermore acknowledge this. Yet the latter rests his
argument on the supposition that the Conscription gathered in all males
between 16 and 60 years.
In further illustration of this subject, I may point out that one of the
difficulties confronting the conscript officers was the opposition of
the governors of some of the States, notably the Governor of
Mississippi, the Governor of North Carolina, and the Governor of
Georgia. Thus the doctrine of States' Rights, which was the bedrock of
the Southern Confederacy, became a barrier to the effectiveness of the
Confederate government! South Carolina passed an exemption law which
nullified to a certain extent the conscript laws of the Confederacy, and
Governor Vance of North Carolina proposed "to try title with the
Confederate Government in resisting the claims of the conscript officers
to such citizens of North Carolina as he made claim to for the proper
administration of the State."
"The laws of North Carolina," General Preston complains (W. R., iv, iii,
p. 867), "have created large numbers of officers, and the Governor of
that State has not only claimed exemption for those officers, but for
all persons employed in any form by the State of North Carolina, such as
workers in factories, salt-makers, etc."
"This bureau has no power to enforce the Confederate law in opposition
to the ... claims of the State."
Governor Brown of Georgia forbade the enrollment of "large bodies of the
citizens of Georgia." The number is supposed to have reached eight
thousand men liable to Confederate service. General Preston complains in
like strain of the action of the Governor of Mississippi.