THE COMBATANTS
No map can show the exact dividing line between the actual combatants
of North and South. Eleven States seceded: Virginia, the Carolinas,
Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, Texas,
and Arkansas. But the mountain folk of western Virginia and eastern
Tennessee were strong Unionists; and West Virginia became a State
while the war was being fought. On the other hand, the four border
States, though officially Federal under stress of circumstances,
were divided against themselves. In Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri,
and Kansas, many citizens took the Southern side. Maryland would
have gone with the South if it had not been for the presence of
overwhelming Northern sea-power and the absence of any good land
frontier of her own. Kentucky remained neutral for several months.
Missouri was saved for the Union by those two resourceful and determined
men, Lyon and Blair. Kansas, though preponderantly Unionist, had
many Confederates along its southern boundary. On the whole the
Union gained greatly throughout the borderlands as the war went on;
and the remaining Confederate hold on the border people was more
than counterbalanced by the Federal hold on those in the western
parts of old Virginia and the eastern parts of Tennessee. Among
the small seafaring population along the Southern coast there were
also some strongly Union men.
Counting out Northern Confederates and Southern Federals as canceling
each other, so far as effective fighting was concerned a comparison
made between the North and South along the line of actual secession
reveals the one real advantage the South enjoyed all through--an
overwhelming party in favor of the war. When once the die was cast
there was certainly not a tenth of the Southern whites who did not
belong to the war party; and the peace party always had to hold
its tongue. The Southerners formed simpler and far more homogeneous
communities of the old long-settled stock, and were more inclined
to act together when once their feelings were profoundly stirred.
The Northern communities, on the other hand, being far more complex
and far less homogeneous, were plagued with peace parties that
grew like human weeds, clogging the springs of action everywhere.
There were immigrants new to the country and therefore not inclined
to take risks for a cause they had not learned to make their own.
There were also naturalized, and even American-born, aliens, aliens
in speech, race, thought, and every way of life. Then there were the
oppositionists of different kinds, who would not support any war
government, however like a perfect coalition it might be. Among these
were some Northerners who did business with the South, especially
the men who financed the cotton and tobacco crops. Others, again,
were those loose-tongued folk who think any vexed question can be
settled by unlimited talk. Next came those "defeatist" cranks who
always think their own side must be wrong, and who are of no more
practical use than the out-and-out "pacifists" who think everybody
wrong except themselves. Finally, there were those slippery folk who
try to evade all public duty, especially when it smacks of danger.
These skulkers flourish best in large and complex populations,
where they may even masquerade as patriots of the kind so well
described by Lincoln when he said how often he had noticed that
the men who were loudest in proclaiming their readiness to shed
their last drop of blood were generally the most careful not to
shed the first.
Many of these fustian heroes formed the mushroom secret societies
that played their vile extravaganza right under the shadow of the
real tragedy of war. Worse still, not content with the abracadabra
of their silly oaths, the busybody members made all the mischief
they could during Lincoln's last election. Worst of all, they not
only tried their hands at political assassination in the North but
they lured many a gallant Confederate to his death by promising to
rise in their might for a "Free Northwest" the moment the Southern
troopers should appear. Needless to say, not a single one of the whole
bombastic band of cowards stirred a finger to help the Confederate
troopers who rode to their doom on Morgan's Raid through Indiana and
Ohio. The peace party wore a copper as a badge, and so came to be known
as "Copperheads," much to the disgust of its more inflated members,
who called themselves the Sons of Liberty. The war party, with a
better appreciation of how names and things should be connected,
used their own descriptive "Copperhead" in its appropriate meaning
of a poisonous snake in the grass behind.
The Indians would have preferred neutrality between the two kinds
of inevitably dispossessing whites. But neutrality was impossible
in what was then the Far West. Not ten thousand Indians fought
for both sides put together. On the whole they fought well as
skirmishers, though they rarely withstood shell fire, even when
their cover was good and their casualties small.
The ten times more numerous negroes were naturally a much more
serious factor. The North encouraged the employment of colored labor
corps and even colored soldiers, especially after Emancipation.
But the vast majority of negroes, whether slave or free, either
preferred or put up with their Southern masters, whom they generally
served faithfully enough either in military labor corps or on the
old plantations. As the colored population of the South was three
and a half millions this general fidelity was of great importance
to the forces in the field.
The total population of the United States in 1861 was about thirty-one
and a half millions. Of this total twenty-two and a half belonged to
the North and nine to the South. The grand total odds were therefore
five against two. The odds against the South rise to four against
one if the blacks are left out. There were twenty-two million whites
in the North against five and a half in the South. But to reach
the real fighting odds of three to one we must also eliminate the
peace parties, large in the North, small in the South. If we take
a tenth off the Southern whites and a third off the Northern grand
total we shall get the approximate war-party odds of three to one;
for these subtractions leave fifteen millions in the North against
only five in the South.
This gives the statistical key to the startling contrasts which
were so often noted by foreign correspondents at the time, and
which are still so puzzling in the absence of the key. The whole
normal life of the South was visibly changed by the war. But in
the North the inquiring foreigner could find, on one hand, the
most steadfast loyalty and heroic sacrifice, both in the Northern
armies and among their folks at home, while on the other he could
find a wholly different kind of life flaunting its most shameless
features in his face. The theaters were crowded. Profiteers abounded,
taking their pleasures with ravenous greed; for the best of their
blood-money would end with the war. Everywhere there was the same
fundamental difference between the patriots who carried on the war
and the parasites who hindered them. Of course the two-thirds who
made up the war party were not all saints or even perfect patriots.
Nor was the other third composed exclusively of wanton sinners. There
were, for instance, the genuine settlers whom the Union Government
encouraged to occupy the West, beyond the actual reach of war. But
the distinction still remains.
Though sorely hampered, the Union Government did, on the whole,
succeed in turning the vast and varied resources of the North against
the much smaller and less varied resources of the South. The North
held the machinery of national government, though with the loss of
a good quarter of the engineers. In agriculture of, all kinds both
North and South were very strong for purposes of peace. Each had
food in superabundance. But the trading strength of the South lay
in cotton and tobacco, neither of which could be turned into money
without going north or to sea. In finance the North was overwhelmingly
strong by comparison, more especially because Northern sea-power
shut off the South from all its foreign markets. In manufactures
the South could not compare at all. Northern factories alone could
not supply the armies. But finance and factories together could.
The Southern soldier looked to the battlefield and the raiding
of a base for supplying many of his most pressing needs in arms,
equipment, clothing, and even food--for Southern transport suffered
from many disabilities. Fierce wolfish cries would mingle with
the rebel yell in battle when the two sides closed. "You've got
to leave your rations!"--"Come out of them clothes!"--"Take off
them boots, Yank!"--"Come on, blue bellies, we want them blankets!"
It was the same in almost every kind of goods. The South made next
to none for herself and had to import from the North or overseas.
The North could buy silk for balloons. The South could not. The
Southern women gave in their whole supply of silk for the big balloon
that was lost during the Seven Days' Battle in the second year of
the war. The Southern soldiers never forgave what they considered
the ungallant trick of the Northerners who took this many-hued
balloon from a steamer stranded on a bar at low tide down near
the mouth of the James. Thus fell the last silk dress, a queer
tribute to Northern sea-power! Northern sea-power also cut off
nearly everything the sick and wounded needed; which raised the
death rate of the Southern forces far beyond the corresponding death
rate in the North. Again, preserved rations were almost unknown in
the South. But they were plentiful throughout the Northern armies:
far too plentiful, indeed, for the taste of the men, who got "fed
up" on the dessicated vegetables and concentrated milk which they
rechristened "desecrated vegetables" and "consecrated milk."
There is the same tale to tell about transport and munitions. Outside
the Tredegar Iron Works at Richmond the only places where Southern
cannon could be made were Charlotte in North Carolina, Atlanta and
Macon in Georgia, and Selma in Alabama. The North had many places,
each with superior plant, besides which the oversea munition world
was far more at the service of the open-ported North than of the
close-blockaded South. What sea-power meant in this respect may be
estimated from the fact that out of the more than three-quarters of
a million rifles bought by the North in the first fourteen months
of the war all but a beggarly thirty thousand came from overseas.
[Illustration: North and South in 1861.]
Transport was done by road, rail, sea, and inland waters. Other
things being equal, a hundred tons could be moved by water as easily
as ten by rail or one by road. Now, the North not only enjoyed
enormous advantages in sea-power, both mercantile and naval, but
in road, rail, canal, and river transport too. The road transport
that affected both sides most was chiefly in the South, because most
maneuvering took place there. "Have you been through Virginia?--Yes,
in several places" is a witticism that might be applied to many
another State where muddy sloughs abounded. In horses, mules, and
vehicles the richer North wore out the poorer and blockaded South.
Both sides sent troops, munitions, and supplies by rail whenever
they could; and here, as a glance at the map will show, the North
greatly surpassed the South in mileage, strategic disposition,
and every other way.
The South had only one through line from the Atlantic to the
Mississippi; and this ran across that Northern salient which threatened
the South from the southwestern Alleghanies. The other rails all had
the strategic defect of not being convenient for rapid concentration
by land; for most of the Southern rails were laid with a view to
getting surplus cotton and tobacco overseas. The strategic gap
at Petersburg was due to a very different cause; for there, in
order to keep its local transfers, the town refused to let the most
important Virginian lines connect.
Taking sea-power in its fullest sense, to include all naval and
mercantile parts on both salt and fresh water, we can quite understand
how it helped the nautical North to get the strangle-hold on the
landsman's South. The great bulk of the whole external trade of
the South was done by shipping. But, though the South was strong in
exportable goods, it was very weak in ships. It owned comparatively
few of the vessels that carried its rice, cotton, and tobacco crops
to market and brought back made goods in return. Yankees, Britishers,
and Bluenoses (as Nova Scotian craft were called) did most of the
oversea transportation.
Moreover, the North was vastly stronger than the South on all the
inland waters that were not "Secesh" from end to end. The map shows
how Northern sea-power could not only divide the South in two but
almost enisle the eastern part as well. Holding the Mississippi
would effect the division, while holding the Ohio would make the
eastern part a peninsula, with the upper end of the isthmus safe in
Northern hands between Pittsburgh, the great coal and iron inland
port, and Philadelphia, the great seaport, less than three hundred
miles away. The same isthmus narrows to less than two hundred miles
between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg (on the Susquehanna River); and
its whole line is almost equally safe in Northern hands. A little
farther south, along the disputed borderlands, it narrows to less
than one hundred miles, from Pittsburgh to Cumberland (on the Potomac
canal). Even this is not the narrowest part of the isthmus, which
is less than seventy miles across from Cumberland to Brownsville
(on the Monongahela) and less than fifty from Cumberland to the
Ohiopyle Falls (on the Youghiogheny). These last distances are
measured between places that are only fit for minor navigation.
But even small craft had an enormous advantage over road and rail
together when bulky stores were moved. So Northern sea-power could
make its controlling influence felt in one continuous line all
round the eastern South, except for fifty miles where small craft
were concerned and for two hundred miles in the case of larger
vessels. These two hundred miles of land were those between the
Ohio River port of Wheeling and the Navy Yard at Washington.
Nor was this virtual enislement the only advantage to be won. For
while the strong right arm of Union sea-power, facing northward
from the Gulf, could hold the coast, and its sinewy left could
hold the Mississippi, the supple left fingers could feel their
way along the tributary streams until the clutching hand had got
its grip on the whole of the Ohio, Cumberland, Tennessee, Missouri,
Arkansas, and Red rivers. This meant that the North would not only
enjoy the vast advantages of transport by water over transport
by land but that it would cause the best lines of invasion to be
opened up as well.
Of course the South had some sea-power of her own. Nine-tenths of
the United States Navy stood by the Union. But, with the remaining
tenth and some foreign help, the South managed to contrive the
makeshift parts of what might have become a navy if the North had
only let it grow. The North, however, did not let it grow.
The regular navy of the United States, though very small to start
with, was always strong enough to keep the command of the sea and
to prevent the makeshift Southern parts of a navy from ever becoming
a whole. Privateers took out letters of marque to prey on Northern
shipping. But privateering soon withered off, because prizes could
not be run through the blockade in sufficient numbers to make it
pay; and no prize would be recognized except in a Southern port.
Raiders did better and for a much longer time. The _Shenandoah_
was burning Northern whalers in Bering Sea at the end of the war.
The _Sumter_ and the _Florida_ cut a wide swath under instructions
which "left much to discretion and more to the torch." The famous
_Alabama_ only succumbed to the U.S.S. _Kearsarge_ after sinking
the _Hatteras_ man-of-war and raiding seventy other vessels. Yet
still the South, in spite of her ironclads, raiders, and rams, in
spite of her river craft, of the home ships or foreigners that
ran the blockade, and of all her other efforts, was a landsman's
country that could make no real headway against the native sea-power
of the North.
Perhaps the worst of all the disabilities under which the abortive
Southern navy suffered was lubberly administration and gross civilian
interference. The Administration actually refused to buy the beginnings
of a ready-made sea-going fleet when it had the offer of ten British
East Indiamen specially built for rapid conversion into men-of-war.
Forty thousand bales of cotton would have bought the lot. The
Mississippi record was even worse. Five conflicting authorities
divided the undefined and overlapping responsibilities between
them: the Confederate Government, the State governments, the army,
the navy, and the Mississippi skippers. A typical result may be seen
in the fate of the fourteen "rams" which were absurdly mishandled by
fourteen independent civilian skippers with two civilian commodores.
This "River Defense Fleet" was "backed by the whole Missouri delegation"
at Richmond, and blessed by the Confederate Secretary of War, Judah
P. Benjamin, that very clever lawyer-politician and ever-smiling
Jew. Six of the fourteen "rams" were lost, with sheer futility,
at New Orleans in April, '62; the rest at Memphis the following
June.
As a matter of fact the Confederate navy never had but one real
man-of-war, the famous _Merrimac_; and she was a mere razee, cut
down for a special purpose, and too feebly engined to keep the
sea. Even the equally famous _Alabama_ was only a raider, never
meant for action with a fleet. Over three hundred officers left
the United States Navy for the South; but, as in the case of the
Army, they were followed by very few men. The total personnel of the
regular Confederate navy never exceeded four thousand at any one time.
The irregular forces afloat often did gallant, and sometimes even
skillful, service in little isolated ways. But when massed together
they were always at sixes and sevens; and they could never do more
than make the best of a very bad business indeed. The Secretary of
the Confederate navy, Stephen R. Mallory, was not to blame. He was
one of the very few civilians who understood and tried to follow
any naval principles at all. He had done good work as chairman of
the Naval Committee in the Senate before the war, and had learnt
a good deal more than his Northern rival, Gideon Welles. He often
saw what should have been done. But men and means were lacking.
Men and means were also lacking in the naval North at the time
the war began. But the small regular navy was invincible against
next to none; and it enjoyed many means of expansion denied to
the South.
On the outbreak of hostilities the United States Navy had ninety
ships and about nine thousand men--all ranks and ratings (with
marines) included. The age of steam had come. But fifty vessels
had no steam at all. Of the rest one was on the Lakes, five were
quite unserviceable, and thirty-four were scattered about the world
without the slightest thought of how to mobilize a fleet at home.
The age of ironclads had begun already overseas. But in his report
to Congress on July 4, 1861, Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy,
only made some wholly non-committal observations in ponderous
"officialese." In August he appointed a committee which began its
report in September with the sage remark that "Opinions differ
amongst naval and scientific men as to the policy of adopting the
iron armament for ships-of-war." In December Welles transmitted this
report to Congress with the still sager remark that "The subject
of iron armature for ships is one of great general interest, not
only to the navy and country, but is engaging the attention of the
civilized world." Such was the higher administrative preparation
for the ironclad battle of the following year.
It was the same in everything. The people had taken no interest in
the navy and Congress had faithfully represented them by denying
the service all chance of preparing for war till after war had
broken out. Then there was the usual hurry and horrible waste.
Fortunately for all concerned, Gideon Welles, after vainly groping
about the administrative maze for the first five months, called
Gustavus V. Fox to his assistance. Fox had been a naval officer of
exceptional promise, who had left the service to go into business,
who had a natural turn for administration, and who now made an
almost ideal Assistant Secretary of the Navy. He was, indeed, far
more than this; for, in most essentials, he acted throughout the
war as a regular Chief of Staff.
One of the greatest troubles was the glut of senior officers who
were too old and the alarming dearth of juniors fit for immediate
work afloat. It was only after the disaster at Bull Run that Congress
authorized the formation of a Promotion Board to see what could be
done to clear the active list and make it really a list of officers
fit for active service. Up to this time there had been no system
of retiring men for inefficiency or age. An officer who did not
retire of his own accord simply went on rising automatically till
he died. The president of this board had himself turned sixty.
But he was the thoroughly efficient David Glasgow Farragut, a man
who was to do greater things afloat than even Fox could do ashore.
How badly active officers were wanted may be inferred from the
fact that before the appointment of Farragut's promotion board
the total number of regular officers remaining in the navy was
only 1457. Intensive training was tried at the Naval Academy. Yet
7500 volunteer officers had to be used before the war was over.
These came mostly from the merchant service and were generally
brave, capable, first-rate men. But a nautical is not the same as
a naval training; and the dearth of good professional naval officers
was felt to the end. The number of enlisted seamen authorized by
Congress rose from 7600 to 51,500. But the very greatest difficulty
was found in "keeping up to strength," even with the most lavish
use of bounties.
The number of vessels in the navy kept on growing all through.
Of course not nearly all of them were regular men-of-war or even
fighting craft "fit to go foreign." At the end of the first year
there were 264 in commission; at the end of the second, 427; at
the end of the third, 588; and at the end of the fourth, 671.
Bearing this in mind, and remembering the many other Northern odds,
one might easily imagine that the Southern armies fought only with
the courage of despair. Yet such was not the case. This was no
ordinary war, to be ended by a treaty in which compromise would
play its part. There could be only two alternatives: either the
South would win her independence or the North would have to beat
her into complete submission. Under the circumstances the united
South would win whenever the divided North thought that complete
subjugation would cost more than it was worth. The great aim of
the South was, therefore, not to conquer the North but simply to
sicken the North of trying to conquer her. "Let us alone and we'll
let you alone" was her insinuating argument; and this, as she knew
very well, was echoed by many people in the North. Thus, as regards
her own objective, she began with hopes that the Northern peace
party never quite let die.
Then, so far as her patriotic feelings were concerned, the South
was not fighting for any one point at issue--not even for slavery,
because only a small minority held slaves--but for her whole way
of life, which, rightly or wrongly, she wanted to live in her own
Southern way; and she passionately resented the invasion of her
soil. This gave her army a very high morale, which, in its turn,
inclined her soldiers the better to appreciate their real or imagined
advantages over the Northern hosts. First, they and their enemies
both knew that they enjoyed the three real advantages of fighting
at home under magnificent leaders and with interior lines. Robert
Lee and Stonewall Jackson stood head and shoulders above any Northern
leaders till Grant and Sherman rose to greatness during the latter
half of the war. Lee himself was never surpassed; and he, like
Jackson and several more, made the best use of home surroundings
and of interior lines. Anybody can appreciate the prime advantage of
interior lines by imagining two armies of equal strength operating
against each other under perfectly equal conditions except that one
has to move round the circumference of a circle while the other
moves to meet it along the shorter lines inside. The army moving
round the circumference is said to be operating on exterior lines,
while the army moving from point to point of the circumference
by the straighter, and therefore shorter, lines inside is said
to be operating on interior lines. In more homely language the
straight road beats the crooked one. In plain slang, it's best to
have the inside track.
Of course there is a reverse to all this. If the roads, rails,
and waterways are better around the circle than inside it, then
the odds may be turned the other way; and this happens most often
when the forces on the exterior lines are the better provided with
sea-power. Again, if the exterior forces are so much stronger than
the interior forces that these latter dare not leave any strategic
point open in case the enemy breaks through, then it is evident
that the interior forces will suffer all the disadvantages of being
surrounded, divided, worn out, and defeated.
This happened at last to the South, and was one of the four advantages
she lost. Another was the hope of foreign intervention, which died
hard in Southern hearts, but which was already moribund halfway
through the war. A third was the hope of dissension in the North,
a hope which often ran high till Lincoln's reëlection in November,
'64, and one which only died out completely with the surrender of
Lee. The fourth was the unfounded belief that Southerners were
the better fighting men. They certainly had an advantage at first
in having a larger proportion of men accustomed to horses and arms
and inured to life in the open. But, other things being equal, there
was nothing to choose between the two sides, so far as natural
fighting values were concerned.
Practically all the Southern "military males" passed into the ranks;
and a military male eventually meant any one who could march to
the front or do non-combatant service with an army, from boys in
their teens to men in their sixties. Conscription came after one
year; and with very few exemptions, such as the clergy, Quakers,
many doctors, newspaper editors, and "indispensable" civil servants.
Lee used to express his regret that all the greatest strategists
were tied to their editorial chairs. But sterner feelings were
aroused against that recalcitrant State Governor, Joseph Brown
of Georgia, who declared eight thousand of his civil servants to
be totally exempt. From first to last, conscripts and volunteers,
nearly a million men were enrolled: equaling one-fifth of the entire
war-party white population of the seceding States.
All branches of the service suffered from a constant lack of arms
and munitions. As with the ships for the navy so with munitions
for the army, the South did not exploit the European markets while
her ports were still half open and her credit good, Jefferson Davis
was spotlessly honest, an able bureaucrat, and full of undying zeal.
But, though an old West Pointer, he was neither a foresightful
organizer nor fit to exercise any of the executive power which he
held as the constitutional commander-in-chief by land and sea. He
ordered rifles by the thousand instead of by the hundred thousand;
and he actually told his Cabinet that if he could only take one
wing while Lee took the other they would surely beat the North.
Worse still, he and his politicians kept the commissariat under
civilian orders and full of civilian interference, even at the
front, which, in this respect, was always a house divided against
itself.
The little regular army of '61, only sixteen thousand strong, stood
by the Union almost to a man; though a quarter of the officers
went over to the South. Yet the enlisted man was despised even
by the common loafers who would not fight if they could help it.
"Why don't you come in?" asked a zealous lady at a distribution
of patriotic gifts, "aren't you one of our heroes?" "No, ma'am,"
answered the soldier, "I'm only a regular."
The question of command was often a very vexed one; and many mistakes
were made before the final answers came. The most significant of
all emergent facts was this: that though the officers who had been
regulars before the war did not form a hundredth part of all who
held commissions during it, yet these old regulars alone supplied
every successful high commander, Federal and Confederate alike,
both afloat and ashore.
The North had four times as many whites as the South; it used more
blacks as soldiers; and the complete grand total of all the men
who joined its forces during the war reached two millions and
three-quarters. But this gives a quite misleading idea of the real
odds in favor of the North, especially the odds available in battle.
A third of the Northern people belonged to the peace party and
furnished no recruits at all till after conscription came in. The
late introduction of conscription, the abominable substitution
clause, and the prevalence of bounty-jumping combined to reduce
both the quantity and quality of the recruits obtained by money or
compulsion. The Northerners that did fight were generally fighting
in the South, among a very hostile population, which, while it made
the Southern lines of communication perfectly safe, threatened
those of the North at every point and thus obliged the Northern
armies to leave more and more men behind to guard the communications
that each advance made longer still. Finally, the South generally
published the numbers of only its actual combatants, while the
Northern returns always included every man drawing pay, whether
a combatant or not. On the whole, the North had more than double
numbers, even if compared with a Southern total that includes
noncombatants. But it should be remembered that a Northern army
fighting in the heart of the South, and therefore having to guard
every mile of the way back home, could not meet a Southern one
with equal strength in battle unless it had left the North with
fully twice as many.
Conscription came a year later (1863) in the North than in the
South and was vitiated by a substitution clause. The fact that a
man could buy himself out of danger made some patriots call it "a
rich man's war and a poor man's fight." And the further fact that
substitutes generally became regular bounty-jumpers, who joined
and deserted at will, over and over again, went far to increase the
disgust of those who really served. Frank Wilkeson's _Recollections
of a Private Soldier in the Army of the Potomac_ is a true voice from
the ranks when he explains "how the resort to volunteering, the
unprincipled dodge of cowardly politicians, ground up the choicest
seed-corn of the nation; how it consumed the young, the patriotic,
the intelligent, the generous, and the brave; and how it wasted
the best moral, social, and political elements of the Republic,
leaving the cowards, shirkers, egotists, and moneymakers to stay
at home and procreate their kind."
That is to say, it was so arranged that the foxy-witted lived, while
the lion-hearted died.
The organization of the vast numbers enrolled was excellent whenever
experts were given a free hand. But this free hand was rare. One
vital point only needs special notice here: the wastefulness of
raising new regiments when the old ones were withering away for
want of reinforcements. A new local regiment made a better "story"
in the press; and new and superfluous regiments meant new and
superfluous colonels, mostly of the speechifying kind. So it often
happened that the State authorities felt obliged to humor zealots
set on raising those brand-new regiments which doubled their own
difficulties by having to learn their lesson alone, halved the
efficiency of the old regiments they should have reinforced, and
harassed the commanders and staff by increasing the number of units
that were of different and ever-changing efficiency and strength.
It was a system of making and breaking all through.
The end came when Northern sea-power had strangled the Southern
resources and the unified Northern armies had worn out the fighting
force. Of the single million soldiers raised by the South only two
hundred thousand remained in arms, half starved, half clad, with the
scantiest of munitions, and without reserves of any kind. Meanwhile
the Northern hosts had risen to a million in the field, well fed,
well clothed, well armed, abundantly provided with munitions, and
at last well disciplined under the unified command of that great
leader, Grant. Moreover, behind this million stood another million
fit to bear arms and obtainable at will from the two millions of
enrolled reserves.
The cost of the war was stupendous. But the losses of war are not
to be measured in money. The real loss was the loss of a million
men, on both sides put together, for these men who died were of
the nation's best.