Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 04.djvu/44

36 rectness for the purpose in view, and as my object was to show Dr. B.'s inconsistency, I of course used the roster as he gives it. I have no means of verifying the Federal roster, but assume its accuracy as a matter of course. Now if we take merely the lists of regiments, assuming them to be equally full, we have the infantry strength of the two armies as 239:163. If Meade had 95,000 men on the field, as he testifies, then deducting 15,000 or 16,000 for artillery and cavalry (Dr. Bates places the cavalry alone at 12,000), there remained about 80,000 for his infantry force at Gettysburg.

Then, 239 : 163 :: 80,000 : 54,560=the Confederate infantry. If 10,000 be added to this for artillery and cavalry, the entire Confederate force would be between 64,000 and 65,000 men, and the ratio of Federals to Confederates on the field would be as about 95,000 to 65,000.

It is difficult to see how Dr. Bates could make an estimate with any regard to the facts which would place the Confederate strength nearer to the Federal than the above figures permit.

———— is, however, a soldier of far too much skill and experience not to appreciate the special advantages enjoyed by the Federal commanders for keeping up the strength of their regiments over those possessed by their antagonists. On both sides there was a disposition to maintain the regimental organization for the sake of good officers, even when their commands had worn away to skeletons; but while the Confederate government filled up these skeletons slowly and painfully from a sparse population, and derived no assistance from immigration, the Federal government drew from a population about four times as numerous, and through the employment of foreign immigrants as substitutes, availed itself largely of a source of supply entirely out of reach of the South. Hence it was, that Confederate regiments, which had seen any length of service, were not, as a usual thing, equal in strength to Federal ones; and hence it is that the above calculation of Lee's strength at Gettysburg is from 5,000 to 7,000 in excess of the