,000 men levied previously, it is the heaviest draft ever made
from a population. No emperor or despot ever did it in a similar lapse
of time. The appreciation current here is, that the twenty millions of
inhabitants can easily furnish such a quota; but the truth is that the
draft, or the levy, or the volunteering, is made from about three
millions of men between the ages of twenty and forty years. One
million two hundred thousand in one year is equal to nearly 36-100,
and this from the most vital, the most generative, and most productive
part of the population.

The same analysis and percentage applied to the statistics of the
population in the rebel States gives a little above 300,000 men under
arms; however, the percentage of the drafts from the full-aged
population in the South can be increased by some 15-100 over the
percentage in the North. This increase is almost exclusively
facilitated by the substratum of slavery, and our administration
devotedly takes care _ne detrimentum capiat_ that peculiar
institution.

The last draft could be averted from the North if the four millions of
loyal Africo-Americans were called to arms. But Mr. Lincoln, with the
Sewards, the Blairs, and others, will rather see every Northern man
shot than to touch the palladium of the rebels.

These new enormous masses will crush the rebellion, provided they are
not marshalled by strategy; but nevertheless the painful confession
must be made, that our putting in the field of three to one rebel may
confuse a future historian, and contribute to root more firmly that
stupid fallacy already asserted by the rebels, and by some among their
European upholders, of the superiority of the Southern over the
Northern thus called race. Such a stigma is inflicted upon the brave
and heroic North by the strategy, and by the vacillating, slave-saving
policy of the administration.

This is the more painful for me to record, as most of the foreign
officers in our service, and who are experienced and good judges, most
positively assert the superior fighting qualities of the Union
volunteers over the rebels. Our troops are better fed, clad and armed,
but over our army hovers the thick mist of strategy and indecision;
the rebels are led not by anaconda strategians, but by fighting
generals, desperate, and thus externally heroic; energy inspires their
councils, their administration, and their military leaders.

If Stanton and Halleck succeed in extricating the