Let us turn now to the deductions that have to be made from this number.
1.--On the ground of disloyalty we have no facts on which to base an
estimate, hence the number must be left indeterminate, but it was
certainly considerable. The chief of the Bureau of Education estimates
the Appalachian mountaineers in the Southern States at present at
3,000,000. They must therefore have been very numerous in 1861, and it
is conceded that most of them were loyal to the Union. Some Southern
writers estimate 80,000 as the number of Union men who refused and
evaded service in the Confederate army. If there were only one million
of these mountaineers, they would represent 160,000 men of military age
and fitness.
2.--We must also deduct a large number for men _exempted_ for various
causes, besides the accepted exemption of twenty per cent. for physical
and mental disability. Of this we have no complete statistics, but there
are preserved in the War Department Records several documents which
enable us to arrive at an approximate estimate.
Under the head of "Public Necessity" we find _exemptions_ for railroad
companies, telegraph companies, navigation companies, cotton and wool
factories, paper mills, iron manufactories, foundries, printing
establishments, fire department, police department, gas-works, salt
manufactories, shoemakers, tanners, blacksmiths, millers, millwrights,
ferrymen, wheelwrights, wagon-makers, express companies, equity, justice
and necessity, indigent circumstances, and miscellaneous. (_Id._ p.
873.)
Thus General Preston, writing November 23, 1864 (W. R., ser. iv. vol.
iii, p. 850), says: "The governors of the States do not confine their
certificates of exemption to officers, as that term seems to be used in
the law, but extend them to all persons in the service of the State, or
in any mode employed by State authority; and that authority is
interposed to prevent the conscript officers from enrolling and
assigning such persons to the Confederate service."
He gives a table (p. 851) of _State officers_ exempted on certificates
of the governors, and it appears that in Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee and Florida there
were 18,843 such exempts.
The _civil officers_ exempted in the State of Georgia were 5,478, and
militia officers 2,751. (See W. R., iv., vol. iii, p. 869.) In the same
State the exempts for agricultural and necessary purposes reached the
number of 4,156, making the total exemptions in that one State, 12,385.
(_Id._ iv. iii. p. 873.)
General Preston also reports the number of State officers exempted in
North Carolina, November, 1864, at 14,675 (_Idem_, p. 851).
There is a report in the same publication, p. 96, which gives the number
of persons exempted by occupation, in Virginia, at 13,063. Thus in
these three States we have records of exemptions amounting to 40,123. I
am unable to give the number of exemptions in the remaining eight
seceded States; but if they were at all in proportion to what we find
them in Virginia, Georgia, and North Carolina, then we must reckon the
exemptions in the whole Confederacy as nearly 120,000, since the
military population of those three States was only a little more than a
third of the whole. These, be it observed, were not men detailed from
the army, but exempted from enrollment.
3.--Estimate of men _detailed_ for special work in the various branches
of manufacture necessary for the support of the Army and people. Here we
have a difficult problem, but some light is thrown upon it by the
following report of men detailed in the State of Georgia (_Idem._ iv.
iii. p. 874):
For agricultural purposes 957
For public necessities 1,264
For government purposes 629
For contractors 141
For artisans, mechanics, etc. 508
-----
Total 3,499
And in Virginia we find this item:
Men detailed in departments 4,494
-----
Total in these two States 7,993
From these figures of details in these States we may conservatively
estimate the number of men detailed for various branches of work in the
eleven States of the Confederacy as about 40,000.[10]
4.--The seceded States exclusive of West Va., according to the report
of the War Department, furnished the United States armies with 55,000
men. These must also be deducted from the aggregate above stated.
5.--Then we must deduct, as General Adams acknowledges, from the
aggregate number of men of military age as above (viz., 927,200, less
80,000 disloyal and 55,000 in U. S. army, leaving 792,200) twenty per
cent. for those exempt on account of physical or mental disability, or
158,440. This is the usual percentage, though in the French and British
armies it has been as high as thirty-three per cent.
6.--Natural death rate in two and a half years before being enrolled in
army 11,055 (compare Livermore, p. 22).[11]
But it will be said, and justly, that although after May, 1862, at least
one-fourth of the territory of the seceded States was not in control of
the Confederate government, and therefore not available as a recruiting
ground for its armies, nevertheless many thousands of men had enlisted
in the Confederate armies previous to May, 1862. Now, it appears from
General Cooper's official report that the aggregate number of men and
officers enrolled in March, 1862, was 340,250. And so our question is,
How large a proportion of this number is to be credited to that part of
the Confederacy which by May, 1862, was occupied by the Federal armies?
If we assume that the part of the country thus occupied furnished as
large a proportion as the rest of the Confederacy (a large assumption),
then, as the population of the occupied part is estimated to have been
about one-fourth of the whole, we may suppose that it furnished the
Confederate army one-fourth of the total 340,000; that is to say, 85,000
men. This is probably a very large assumption, but it may be accepted
for the purposes of our calculation.
To sum up this part of the argument: Let it be granted that there was an
available military population, first and last, in that part of the
Confederacy not occupied by the Federal armies, of 927,200,
To which may be added volunteers first
year of war from territory occupied
by Federal forces after May, 1862 85,000
And also men from Border States 75,000
---------
Aggregate 1,087,200
---------
Deductions from this as follows:
Natural death rate in 2-1/2 years, before
being enrolled in army, 2-1/2% 11,055
Southern men in U. S. army 55,000
Disloyal, estimated 80,000
Exempt for physical and mental disability:
20% of the whole (after deducting
the two previous items) viz.
792,200 158,440
---------
304,495
Leaving available aggregate 782,705[12]
---------
Aggregate 1,087,200
Now let us remember that out of this available aggregate (exaggerated
though I believe the number to be), there had to be created for the
service of the Confederate State three armies,--an army of soldiers, an
army of civil servants and an army of industrial and agricultural
workers. If we put the strength of the fighting army at 620,000, there
will remain for the other two armies 162,000 men,--and we have seen
grounds for believing that there were 40,000 soldiers detailed for
special work, and 120,000 exempt as State officers, workmen in various
occupations, agricultural and necessary purposes, mechanics, railway
servants, etc. And it may be asked with confidence whether for all these
manifold purposes one hundred and sixty-two thousand men can be
considered an excessive or unreasonable number. To support the army in
the field, to equip the civil governments of eleven great States, and to
supply the life blood of civilization in a country of such vast extent
as the Southern Confederacy, necessarily absorbed the energies of a
great number of men.