The numerical strength of the Confederate army Part 2

But our gallant and generous friend taxes us, as we have seen, with casting discredit upon the patriotism of the South by our claim that we had no more than six or seven hundred thousand men in the field. Is he justified in this opinion? Let us see how the matter stands.

THE MILITARY POPULATION OF THE CONFEDERACY

In the month of May, 1862, as we have shown above, at least one-fourth of the Southern territory had been wrenched from the control of the Confederate Government. In the territory remaining there was in round numbers a population of about 3,800,000 souls. The military population then should have been 760,000.

To this must be added, by the extension of the military age down to seventeen, and up to fifty, ten per cent.--that is, in all, six additional years, 76,000.

[In this calculation I adopt Mr. Adams' ratio of three-tenths by a supposed extension down to sixteen and up to sixty,--which gives in the light of the census returns about one-tenth for the _actual_ extension provided by the law of February 17, 1864, viz. down to seventeen and up to fifty years.]

Then we must make a further addition (again adopting Mr. Adams' ratio), for youths reaching military age in four years, of twelve per cent. of the military population, or 91,200 men. This, with the age-extension addition--76,000--makes a total of 167,200, which, added to the original estimated population of 760,000, makes a grand total of 927,200.

To this number Mr. Adams would add the men furnished by the Border States to the Confederate army, viz. (as is alleged), 117,000, a grand available total of 1,044,200.

But this estimate of 117,000 men furnished the Confederate army by the Border States (Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri) cannot be relied upon as even approximately accurate. For example, it includes 20,000 men alleged to have been furnished by the State of Maryland. But a careful examination of all the Maryland organizations, including several companies in Virginia regiments, gives a total of only 4,580 from the State of Maryland; and this number must be largely reduced by names duplicated through re-enlistments. Applying the ratio adopted by the War Department of the United States, we must deduct at least 920 men, which leaves a total of only about 3,500. Even this I believe to be too large. This item alone reduces the estimate of 117,000 to about 100,000. I will discuss this subject at length a little further on in this paper, and will only say here that there is good reason to believe 100,000 an excessive estimate of the number actually furnished to the Confederate colors by the Border States. Let us place the figure at 75,000 as a compromise. Then we should have:

Grand total of men available in the Southern States 927,200 Furnished by the Border States 75,000 --------- Total 1,002,200

NECESSARY DEDUCTIONS

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 doc.u.ments 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.signing 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 a.s.sume that the part of the country thus occupied furnished as large a proportion as the rest of the Confederacy (a large a.s.sumption), 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 a.s.sumption, 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.

GENERAL ADAMS CLAIMS SOUTHERN SUPPORT FOR HIS CONCLUSION

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 a.s.sumed 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.

I cite then a few examples of re-enlistment, established beyond doubt.

1. The first Maryland Infantry, spring of 1862.

2. Rodes' Brigade at Yorktown, spring of 1862; the fifth, sixth and twelfth Alabama and twelfth Mississippi regiments.

"They retained their corporate ident.i.ty, but not simply continued over.