Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 02.djvu/24

, and this hallucination seems to have beset General McClellan with peculiar vividness during his whole military career.

The absurdity of the Federal estimates of our strength, at various times, will be apparent from the following statistics taken from the official census of 1860, as published by the United States Government: In the fourteen States from which came any part of the armies of the Confederate States, including Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, there was a white population of only 7,946,111, of which an aggregate of 2,498,891 was in the said States of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri, leaving only 5,447,220 in the remainder of the Southern States, while there was a white population of 19,011,360 in the States and Territories indisputably under the control of and in sympathy with the United States Government from the beginning, exclusive of Maryland, Kentucky and Missouri. The strong hand of the military power was put upon Maryland in the very outset, by which her voice was suppressed before there was an opportunity of giving expression to it. That State furnished to the Confederate Army only one organized regiment of infantry for one year, and several companies of artillery and cavalry which served through the whole war, while it furnished a very considerable force, by voluntary enlistment and under the draft, to the United States Army. Kentucky undertook to assume a neutral position in the beginning, and by this means was soon brought under the control of Federal bayonets, and subsequently furnished a much larger force to the United States Army than she did to the Confederate Army. Missouri was in the outset taken possession of by military force, and her regular government was overturned and its officers driven out of the State. She furnished also a much larger force to the United States Army than to the Confederate Army. In fact, from their passage, the United States laws upon the subject of the draft were in full force in these three States, during the whole war, while the Confederate conscript act was never in force in either of them for a moment. In addition to this, the greater part of that portion of Virginia now called the State of "West Virginia" was disaffected, from the beginning, to the Confederate cause, and was very soon overrun and held by the United States forces. A large portion of East Tennessee was also disaffected, and at no time did the white population, from which the Confederate States had alone to draw their troops, exceed five millions, while the white population in its own limits, from which the United States Government drew its troops, exceeded considerably twenty millions. In addition to this, by large bounties, it was enabled to