The total white population of the eleven States now comprising the
confederacy is six million, and, therefore, to fill up the ranks of
the proposed army (600,000) about ten percent of the entire white
population will be required. In any other country than our own, such
a draft could not be met, but the Southern States can furnish that
number of men, and still not leave the material interests of the
country in a suffering condition. Those who are incapacitated for
bearing arms can oversee the plantations, and the negroes can go on
undisturbed in their usual labors. In the North, the case is
different; the men who join the army of subjugation are the laborers,
the producers, and the factory operatives. Nearly every man from that
section, especially those from the rural districts, leaves some
branch of industry to suffer during his absence. The institution of
slavery in the South alone enables her to place in the field a force
much larger in proportion to her white population than the North, or
indeed any country which is dependent entirely on free labor. The
institution is a tower of strength to the South, particularly at the
present crisis, and our enemies will be likely to find that the
"moral cancer," about which their orators are so fond of prating, is
really one of the most effective weapons employed against the Union
by the South. Whatever number of men may be needed for this war, we
are confident our people stand ready to furnish. We are all enlisted
for the war, and there must be no holding back until the independence
of the South is fully acknowledged.--Montgomery (Ala.) Adv.