Army of the South

“ Troops lying in camp began to get restless and eager to go at once—even half-prepared as many of them were—to the front. Perfect confidence in the ability of the South to beat back any advance had been before the too prevalent idea of army and people; and the ease of the victory added to this conviction a glow of exultation over the invincibility of the southern soldier. ”

“ And when his army of conscripts shall have wasted away, after their last flurry and struggle, where is he to recruit or procure a new army for resistance or offence? The South is now taking the field with all its strength; but when that strength is broken, what power will remain to confront the forces of the Union? ”

“ The great army of letters that marches Southward with every morning sun is a powerful engine of war. Fill them with tears and sighs, lament separation and suffering, dwell on your loneliness and fears, mourn over the dishonesty of contractors and the incompetency of leaders, doubt if the South will ever be conquered, and foresee financial ruin, and you will damp the powder and dull the swords that ought to deal death upon the foe. ”

“ Whoever will fairly consider that the South had to provide out of her indigenous male population of military age, a fighting army, an industrial army, and an army of civil servants, will not be surprised if it shall appear from the evidence available that she was not able to muster in battle array more than six hundred thousand men. ”

“ I will not compare the resources of the South, in men and money, with those of the North, although statistical statements would demonstrate the overwhelming superiority of the latter. We can afford to be liberal and, for argument's sake, admit that the South will equal the North in numbers, and, if they insist upon it, excel us in martial spirit. But it requires very little knowledge of military matters to understand that, aside from numbers, equipment, courage and discipline, the strength of an army consists in its ability to concentrate its forces, at all times, upon the decisive point. ”

“ Not only had the South to provide from her seven millions of white population an army larger than that of Imperial France, but from a nation of agriculturists she had to provide another army of craftsmen and mechanics to enable the soldiers to keep the field. ”

“ The Southern Army, from its many successive victories in the past, had taught themselves to believe that they were simply invincible upon the field of battle, and the people of the South looked upon the strategy and military skill of Lee and Jackson as being far beyond the cope of any Generals the North could produce. But this battle taught the South a great lesson in many ways. It demonstrated the fact that it was possible to be matched in generalship, it was possible to meet men upon the field equal in courage and endurance to themselves. ”

“ This will be the necessary result, and we think it perfectly useless to disturb the administration and distract the minds of the people with the everlasting discussion of this topic. Soon our army will be in Georgia, Florida, and Louisiana, and the soldiers will carry with their successful arms an element of liberty that will infuse itself into every slave in those States. The only hope for the South, if, indeed, it has not passed away, is to throw down their arms and submit unconditionally to the government. ”

“ Compactly and strongly built, with a commanding figure, prominent features, watchful, gray-hazel eyes, and a rich, manly voice, he was very ready in debate. When the army bill was up, and it was argued that the South was in danger of intimidation, he showed the absurdity of such a position by giving the exact numbers of troops then stationed in each State: "And the entire South has eleven hundred and fifty-five soldiers to intimidate, overrun, oppress, and destroy the liberties of fifteen million people! ”

“ The South seriously proposes to establish itself as a permanently military nation. The blacks are to do all the labor, raise all the food, perform all the menial labor, and, in fact, literally support all the white men. The aristocracy are to govern and fill all higher civil and military functions; the 'mean whites' are to be incorporated in the army. Year by year they will, it is hoped, become more and more identified with their cause and their calling, and firmer in their hatred of the North. ”

“ On the other side, the side of the South, nearly every man who holds office of any sort whatever, either in the state or in the nation, was a Confederate soldier, but this is easily accounted for from the fact that the South was a military camp, and there were very few people of a suitable age to be in the army who were not in it. ”

“ The result of battle must be accepted. The Southern spirit must not perish, luxuriating blindly in despair, but must find a new form of expression, must become part of the new world that was to be, must look to a new birth under new conditions. In this spirit he issued to his army his last address:
After four years of arduous service, marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude, the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. ”

“ I always, even during the war, thought the South had abler men to command its army of Northern Virginia even in that army than Lee, but none more lovely in disposition and character. He was a good man and good but not a great general; and, much less, in the same class with Marlborough, Wellington, and others of modern wars, or Grant, Sheridan, and others of the Civil War, which facts prove. Any man who is a military expert familiar with the subject both from participation, history and study, if of good judgment and honest, will readily concede this. ”

“ At the North many had been deceived by the fictions of preparations at the South for the war of the sections, and among ourselves were few who realized how totally deficient the Southern States were in all which was necessary to the active operations of an army, however gallant the men might be, and however able were the generals who directed and led them. ”

“ While many persons in the North—perhaps strong friends of the Union—are not prepared to endorse the idea of admitting colored regiments into its service, it might be well for us to remember that every effort is being made by the South to make their black population efficient aids in defending their soil against our army. ”

“ We began early to grapple with the fact that the South was without arms with which to meet a well armed, equipped and powerful foe. These disadvantages to be contended with by the new nation were very great, hence the organization of an army and its equipment as best might be was rushed with great vigor. Enlistment was rapid and troops now entering the camp were anxious to be drilled and instructed. ”

“ From the manner in which the war arose it will easily be understood that the South was quicker than the North in shaping its policy for raising armies. Before a shot had been fired at Fort Sumter, and when only seven of the ten Southern States had yet seceded, President Jefferson Davis had at his command more than double the number of the United States Army as it then was. ”

“ In the South a vigorous offensive has again been taken by troops of the First Army, in the course of which a large area of entrenched and fortified ground has been captured from the enemy, whilst valuable support has been afforded to the attack which our Allies have carried on with such marked success against the enemy's positions to the east of Arras and Lens. ”

“ The pioneers of the Old Southwest—the independent and aggressive yeomanry of North Carolina, Virginia, and South Carolina—had risen in their might. Without the aid or authority of blundering state governments, they had created an army of frontiersmen, Indian-fighters, and big-game hunters which had found no parallel or equal on the continent since the Battle of the Great Kanawha. ”

“ The blockade of the Southern ports, beginning in the spring of 1861, was much less spectacular than the operations of the army, but was quite as effective in breaking down the Confederacy. It cut off the South from obtaining foreign war supplies, and reduced it to dependence upon its own products, which were almost exclusively agricultural. Manufacturing industries hardly existed in the South. ”

“ The seceded States are supposed to have had, from first to last, seven hundred thousand men in the field, and you must admit that this is a very large number out of a population of five millions. The other belligerent had in the field from the first to last, 2,859,132, or more than four times the Confederate forces. Where did these immense hosts come from? The Southern States on the border, slave-holding States, furnished in all 301,062, and thus the entire South gave to the Union army 541,216 fighting men. ”

“ But it should be remembered that a Page 81 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." ”

“ The South was united as one man. The North was divided and full of Southern sympathizers. She knew not whom to trust. Officers of the army, officers of the navy, were resigning every day. The great departments of government at Washington contained many men who furnished information to Southern officials. Seventeen steam war vessels (two thirds of all that were not laid up or unfit for service) were in foreign parts. Large quantities of military supplies had been stored in Southern forts. ”

“ We have seen that the rebel South, even by conscription, when necessary, used slaves for military purposes, and those not used directly in that way are required to raise breadstuff's and provisions (instead of cotton) , to supply the Confederate army. Indeed the debates of Congress for many years past, will show that the South boasted, not vainly, of their great military strength, because they declared that, while the slaves would be used in raising provisions to supply their forces, the whole white population capable of bearing arms could then be called into the field. ”

“ In South Carolina and in Kansas the negroes had been put under arms and mustered into service as Union soldiers. In engagements of a minor character they had shown coolness and courage worthy of veterans. There was no valid reason why the negroes along the Mississippi would not be just as valuable in the army, as the men of the same race in other parts of the country. ”

“ In most of the towns of the South you will find a military academy, and here the young cadet has been trained to arms and qualified for office: we have no such class in the Free States, except a few graduates from West Point. Under such officers, a motley army has been collected, composed of foreigners who have toiled in Southern cities as draymen and porters, of Northern clerks driven by coercion or sheer necessity to enlist, the poor whites, the outcasts of the South, a class the most degraded in public estimate,—a class which has the respect of neither the white man nor the negro. ”

“ The South had also discovered that the Yankee peddlers could not be captured with fly-paper, and that although war was not their regular job they were willing to learn how it was done.
In 1862 the national army numbered five hundred thousand men, and the Confederate army three hundred and fifty thousand. Three objects were decided upon by the Federal government for the Union army and navy to accomplish,—viz., 1, the opening of the Mississippi; 2, the blockade of Southern ports; and 3, the capture of Richmond, the capital of the Southern Confederacy. ”

“ In the dark days of the next two years, the South was to find need for all her faith and confidence in the right. As if Jackson’s death was not sufficient evil, July first to third brought Lee’s defeat at Gettysburg, and on the day after this battle, the fall of Vicksburg, on the Mississippi. This meant the complete breaking of the Confederate line in the Southwest, and the return of the Army of Northern Virginia to its original position in Virginia. ”

“ GENERAL SUMTER'S VINDICATION OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA MILITIA.
This favorite scheme of raising a standing army must be pushed forward by every aid of fact and fiction, and that its success may be insured, the Southern members are to be terrified into its adoption, for we are told that the Southern States have much to fear, that there is every reason to believe the Southern States will be speedily invaded by a merciless and vindictive foe from the West Indies. That at this moment thousands may be disgorging on our shores; that they are prepared to strike. ”

“ The Slaves as a Military Element in the South.—The total white population of the eleven States now comprising the Confederacy is 6,000,000, and, therefore, to fill up the ranks of the proposed army (600,000) about ten per cent of the entire white population will be [Pg 104] 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. ”

“ My Union man replied: “There is a very general feeling of great kindness to him, and great sympathy for his present misfortunes. One party in the South assailed his administration very bitterly; but the feeling was not, to any extent, a personal one. He is greatly admired and loved by our people.”
“Was the South exhausted of men when the rebellion broke down? Was it really impossible to re-enforce Lee’s army, and, if so, what citizens have you now for re-organizing State government except the rebel soldiers, unless, indeed, you reckon the negroes?”
“The South never was exhausted of men, sir ”