Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/337

 Rh to bring, especially in Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, and even in Virginia and North Carolina. (See Livermores' "Numbers and Losses.")

By the end of 1864, a crucial period in the history of the war, General Lee thought that the conscription was diminishing rather than increasing the strength of his army. The truth was that, towards the close of the, war, some were "getting tired of it," and especially of its effect on their families at home, and their ability to support them; while they could barely support themselves on their meagre rations, their meagre wages would not support their families. General Starvation, rather than General Grant, conquered our army. Consult McKim (pp. 34, 35) on the Confederate Conscription and the attitude of certain Governors of States towards it, which made it all the harder to enforce. Confederate patriotism was not equal to resisting Confederate suffering.

Dr. McKim next discusses the exempts and details, and concludes (p. 37), that "even if we admit an enrollment in the Confederate army of 700,000, and reduce our estimates of exemptions and details for special work from 125,000 to 100,000, there remain apparently for service in the field, only about 600,000 men; and that, I suppose, is what Gen. Cooper and other Southern authorities had in mind.". See note at foot of pp. 37, 38, giving, on the authority of Gen. Marcus J. Wright, the numbers engaged on both sides in the six greatest battles of the Army of Northern Virginia, which "are far more consistent with the maximum of 600,000 serving with the colors than with the maximum of 1,200,000." I may add, with respect to these figures, that the present writer, in controversy with a writer in The Nation (who afterwards proved to be the late Gen. J. D. Cox), once had occasion to investigate carefully the numbers of the "Confederate forces at Sharpsburg" (Antietam), and came to the conclusion that "the estimate of 35,000 or 36,000 Confederates engaged in the battle of Sharpsburg is a very fair one." Dr. McKim, on the authority of Gen. Wright, gives it as 35,255. (See my letter of February 2, 1895, in the Richmond Times of a few days later.

Dr. McKim follows with a section on "The Military