Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 12.djvu/412

 402 Southern Historical Society Papers.

squad, who, under Captain Wainwright, one of Duke's recruiting officers, were about to start for West Virginia. I joined them. Christmas week we crossed the Hne, and early in January I was with

my brigade.

Henry G. Damon. Corsicana, Texas.

Military Operations of General Beauregard.

By Coi,ONEL Alfred Roman.

A Revieiv by Judge Charles Gayarre.

Paper No. i.

When the Confederacy of the United States of America, formed in 1787, was disrupted, in 1861, by the "Secession" of their Southern associates, and when an armed conflict between the two dissevered factions was anticipated, when these apprehensions were confirmed by the attack of the Southern Confederacy on Fort Sumter in the harbor of Charleston, it was evident to the most superficial observer that the contest, if earnestly entered into, and if prolonged to a con- siderable extent, would be very unequal between the parties. On one side — that of the Northern and Western States — there remained in all its strength a well-organized government with immense re- sources and with wheels accustomed to their functions— a regular army, a regular navy, manufactures of all sorts, accumulated wealth, a compact population, an unlimited credit, a commercial power felt and extended all over the world, andj besides, an able and indefatiga- ble press, which, with its thousand organs, could create, manipulate and utilize a public opinion in all those mighty seats of civilization whose influence, sympathy and tacit or expressed approbation or blame are not to be disdained. It was a self-sufficient being who could exist per se.

On the other side — that of the Southern States — the seceding ones, suddenly coagulating into an embryo government, there were none of the resources which we have mentioned. The population was much inferior in number, purely agricultural, scattered over a vast territory, with no capital, no manufactures, no ships, no materials whatever of war, and no production even of those simple and com- mon implements with which it followed, with an unchangeable ten- acity of habit, its few industrial pursuits, among which, first in rank as