Page:Confederate Military History - 1899 - Volume 12.djvu/286

270 erate congress was disbanded, the judiciary inoperative, the treasury empty, and the finances, resources and civil power of the Confederate States of America perished in the death struggle.

The complete and sudden collapse of the Confederate government officially was typical of the complete exhaustion and prostration of the South in the almost superhuman effort she had made to sustain herself against the great odds in men and resources which the United States government had brought to bear against her. The seceded States had put in the field more than their white arms-bearing population ; when we consider how soon the border States were overrun and occupied, and remember how soon large portions of the territory of these seceded States were also guarded by the Union armies as to prevent any effort to further recruit the Southern armies, this is the more apparent. The Confederacy had enlisted an army of a little over 700,000 men and had fought over 2, 200 battles. The struggle was made over nearly every foot of her territory. She had lost the flower of her youth in the death of 325,000 men from the casualties of war (about one-half her enlisted strength), and many more were disabled and ruined in health. It is a moderate estimate to say that 20 per cent of the white bread-winners of the South were killed or disabled by the war. There was scarcely a home from which one or two had not been taken. The mortality of the Southern troops was enormously greater in proportion than was that of the Union troops, which was only 359,000 men in all, while that of the Southern troops was 325,000 men, the forces of the former outnumbering the latter by over 2,000,000. The contending armies had moved to and fro over the Confederate territory, leaving many cities in ashes and tracts of country in almost every State in waste. The desolation of war had reached nearly every locality and home. The people were utterly impoverished. Nearly all business was destroyed, and