Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/444

 438 Southern Historical Society Papers.

four times the Confederate forces. Where did these immense hosts come from? The Southern States on the border slave-holding States furnished in all 301,062, and thus the entire South gave to the Union army 541,216 righting men. From what quarter of the globe did the remaining two millions and three hundred thousands come?

Rosengarten, in his book, the " German Soldier," puts down the number of Germans in the Federal army at 187,858. I don't know certainly, but I suppose that the Irish soldiers were as numerous as the German in the Federal army, for the Irish seemed to lead every attack and cover every retreat Sumner's Bridge, Marye's Heights, Sharpsburg, Chickamauga always fighting with the indomitable pluck of their race. I once complimented for their gallantry some Irish troops in our service, and I modestly claimed that I had Irish blood in my own veins. But as I had broken up some barrels of whiskey a short time before, they would not own me, and I heard that they said: " Af the owld hapocrit had one dhrop of Irish blood in his veins, he would never have smashed whaskey as he did." Then there were in the Federal army Russians, Austrians, Hungari- ans, Slavs, Magyars, and Teutons alike Scandinavians, Englishmen, Scotchmen, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, Italians, Canadians, and the inhabitants of the far-off isles of the sea. I think, then, that it is true that the seceded States and the border slave-holding States gave more native-born soldiers to the Union army than did the North give of her native-born sons to that army. Surely, then, General Sherman was mistaken in saying that the Civil War was 'a war of races, the South against the North. This is hardly fair to Farragut and Thomas and their gallant associates of the army and navy, and the half million of brave men who fought with them.

2d. Disparity of Resources. Oh! my dear brethren of the loyal North, do not taunt us with our poverty, when your own writer, Thomas Prentice Kettell, tells the world that the South gave $2,770- 000,000 of her wealth to swell Northern profits. If that money were given back to us, we could get up a "big boom" sure enough, and be- come a veritable New South. As it was, we were very poor in military resources in 1861. We were without mines, without factories, foun- dries, machine shops, roller mills without mechanical appliances of every kind. We rushed into war, not only without ships of war and trade, but without a single mill to make powder in the whole Con- federacy, and without even a single machine to make percussion caps. We had been dependent upon the North for everything, even for the