But General Adams supports his opinion by figures taken from a recent
work, "The South in the Building of the Nation." He is thus able to show
on the authority of Southern writers themselves, an aggregate estimate
of 944,000 enlistments in the Confederate armies--to which he adds
117,000, as the number claimed to have been furnished the Confederate
army from the four Border States, making a grand total of 1,061,000
men.
Now, even if the numbers furnished by these _Southern writers_ could be
accepted as approximately accurate, the result would be quite different
from what General Adams figures. For let me call attention to a
memorandum issued by the War Department, U. S. A., May 15, 1905, in
which I find this statement: "It is estimated from the best data now
obtainable that the re-enlistments in the army during the Civil War
numbered 543,393" (p. 4), which is about twenty per cent. of the whole.
This number, the military secretary says, must be deducted from the
total number of enlistments (2,778,304) to get the actual number of men
who were enrolled.
Now, if we apply this same principle and proportion to the alleged
enlistment of 944,000 men in the Southern army, we should deduct for
re-enlistment 188,800; leaving as the actual number of enlisted men, all
told, with the colors and not with the colors, 756,200. And further,
though we have no accurate figures concerning the number of men detailed
for duties of various kinds,--as clerks, skilled mechanics, gunsmiths,
teamsters, cooks, etc.; also details in the medical, quartermaster,
commissary, and other supply departments; and as apothecaries,
physicians, teachers, nurses, agriculturists, railroad employees,
etc.,--we know they numbered many thousands, so that this
number--756,200--must be greatly reduced.
It has, indeed, been argued that we cannot make the deduction which the
War Office claims in estimating the number of men in the Union armies,
as stated above, for the reason that the twelve-months' men in the
Confederate armies "were all retained in service for the war" by the Act
of April 16, 1862. Again, it is insisted that "substantially all of the
regiments enrolled in 1861 remained in service to the end of the war."
"It may, then, be assumed that in effect the term of service of all who
entered the Confederate armies continued from the time they entered
until the end of the War, May 4, 1865." (See Livermore, "Numbers and
Losses," p. 52, 53.)
The best way to test the soundness of this conclusion is to look into
the actual record of some of the troops, to see whether or not they did
re-enlist. If they did, then the same opportunity for error in counting
them twice offered itself as in the case of the Union enlistments.