Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 20.djvu/263

 The Federal and Confederate Armies.

257

The Confederates on April 9, 1865, had 174,223 who were paroled, which added to their prisoners then in Federal prisons, 98,802, made an army of 272,025. Thus it stood at the time of the surrender Federals, 1,000,516, and Confederates, 272,025.

That it may not appear that we have taken a one-sided view of the number of Federals to overcome a given number of Confede- rates, we append the conclusions, written many years after the war, by a brave and distinguished Federal General Don Carlos Buell copied from his article, "Battles and Leaders'' page 51, Vol. Ill, entitled " East Tennessee and the Campaign of Perry ville," which is as follows :

"A philosophical study of our civil conflict must recognize that influences of some sort operated fundamentally for the side of the Confederacy in every prominent event of the war, and nowhere with less effect than in the Tennessee and Kentucky campaign. They are involved in the fact that it required enormous sacrifices from 24,000,000 of people to defeat the political scheme of 8,000,000 ; 2,000,000 of soldiers to subdue 800,000 soldiers; and, descending to detail, a naval fleet and 15,000 troops to advance against a weak fort manned by less than 100 men, at Fort Henry; 35,000 with naval co-operation to overcome 12,000 at Fort Donelson; 60,000 to secure a victory over 40,000 at Pittsburg Landing (Shiloh); 120,000 to enforce the retreat of 65,000 intrenched, after a month of fighting and maneuvering at Corinth; 100,000 repelled by 80,000 in the first peninsular campaign against Richmond; 70,000, with a powerful naval force to inspire the campaign, which lasted nine months, against 40,000 at Vicksburg; 90,000 to barely withstand the assault of 70,000 at Gettysburg; 115,000 sustaining a frightful repulse from 60,000 at Fredericksburg; 100,000 attacked and defeated by 50,000 at Chancellorsville; 85,000 held in check two days by 40,000 at Antietam; 43,000 retaining the field uncertainly against 38,000 at Stone's river; 70,000 defeated at Chickamauga and beleaguered by 70,000 at Chattanooga ; 80,000 merely to break the investing line of 45,000 at Chattanooga; 100,000 to press back 50,000 (afterwards increased to 70,000) from Chattanooga to Atlanta, a distance of 120 miles; 50,000 to defeat the investing line of 30,000 at Nashville; and finally, 120,000 to overcome 60,000 with exhaustion after a struggle of a year in Virginia."

We are not discussing the question of " which is the better soldier." There are logical reasons why it took three or more Federals to