Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/122

 116 Southern Historical Society Papers.

records demonstrate, beyond dispute, the grand triumphs and glory of medicine, proving that the physician is the preserver and defender of armies during war.

These records show that the medical profession, however indispen- sable in the economy of government during peace, become the basis of such economy during war. These statistics show the importance of medicine and its glorious triumphs, and elevate it logically to its true position in the estimation of not only the physician, but in that also of the warrior and statesman. The energy and patriotic bravery of the Confederate soldier are placed in a clear light when we regard the vast armies of the Federals to which they were opposed.

The whole number of troops mustered into the service of the Northern army, during the war of 1861-1865, was two million seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand eight hundred and ninety-three, or about three times as large as the entire fighting population of the Confederate States. At the time of the surrender of the Confederate armies, and the close of active hostilities, the Federal force num- bered one million five hundred and sixteen of all arms, officers and men, and equalled in number the entire fighting population of the Southern Confederacy.

Opposed to this immense army of one million of men, supplied with the best equipments and arms, and with the most abundant rations of food, the Confederate government could oppose less than one hundred thousand war-worn and battle-scarred veterans, almost all of whom had, at some time, been wounded, and who had followed the desperate fortunes of the Confederacy for four years with scant supplies of rations, and almost without pay ; and yet the spirit of the Confederate soldier remained proud and unbroken to the last charge, as was conclusively shown by the battles of Franklin and Nashville, Tennessee; the operations around Richmond and Petersburg; the last charge of the Army of Northern Virginia ; the defense of Fort McAllister on the Ogeechee river in Georgia, where two hundred and fifty Confederate soldiers, in an open earthwork, resisted the assaults of more than five thousand Federal troops, and never surrendered, but were cut down at their guns ; at West Point, Georgia, where there was a similar disparity between the garrison and the assaulting corps, where the first and second in command were killed, and the Confederates cut down within the fort ; the defense of Mobile in Alabama, and the battle of Bentonville in North Carolina.