Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 02.djvu/25

 draw very largely upon the population of other countries on this continent and in Europe, and it also obtained a large number of troops from among the slaves and free negroes of the South, and from the disaffected of those regions which were overrun by its armies. These facts, taken in connection with the further fact that the latter Government entered the contest with all the prestige attached to it as a well established and recognized power, an organized army and navy, possession of the seas and the seaboard, and unlimited resources of money and the materials of war, while the Confederate Government had in the outset to organize all its departments and its armies for the conflict, and was in a great measure destitute of arms, of a revenue, and of the materials of war, demonstrate the utter absurdity of the idea that the latter Government was, at any time, able to oppose to the main armies of its antagonist anything like equal numbers. To suppose that it was able, at so late a period as May, 1864, when so much of its territory was in the possession of its enemy, to oppose to the principal army of the United States under the command of its chosen Commander-in-Chief, at a point so near the capital of that Government, an army so nearly approximating in numbers the former, as stated by General Badeau, would argue a degree of energy and efficiency on the part of the Confederate Government and of imbecility on the part of the United States Government utterly unparalleled in the history of nations.

General Badeau, in the first paragraph of his letter, says: "My principal authority for the proposed corrections is that of General Lee himself." If he means by this that General Lee in person gave him the information upon which he makes his statements, then General Lee has given to General Badeau information which he has not only withheld from all his most intimate associates and friends, and the comrades who followed him so long, but which is entirely at war with his uniform statements in writing and conversation to those in whom he was accustomed to confide. If he means that he has any written statements or acknowledgments of General Lee, then he is challenged to produce the documents in General Lee's handwriting. The word of that gallant gentleman and Christian hero, to those who knew him, is as indisputable as Holy Writ, and he has invariably asserted, up to the time of his lamented death, that the force with which he encountered and fought Grant in the Wilderness was under 50,000 men, including all that Longstreet had brought up. In a letter from him which I have, and which was written on the 15th of March, 1866, he says: