diers ever bore rifle
or sabre than the men of the Southern Confederacy. They were, like most
of their northern antagonists, Americans of the same blood as those who
carried the redoubts at Yorktown and stormed the hill of Chapultepec, and
their courage in the Civil War fully maintained the prestige gained in
battle against alien foes. In intelligence, or at least in education,
however, the rank and file of the Confederate armies were inferior to the
native Americans in the Union armies. The Confederate troops captured at
Vicksburg were no doubt equal to the average, and of the 27,000 men then
made prisoners and paroled two-thirds made their marks, not being able to
write their names. This is not so surprising when it is remembered that
there was no common school system in the South before the war, and that
the "twenty-negro law," exempting the owner of twenty negroes from
conscription, excused from military service the class which had an
opportunity to be educated, and which also had most at stake in the
contest.

Before the close of the war, however, all exemptions in the Confederacy
were virtually swept away, and the government enlisted every one able to
bear a musket, from the boy hardly in his teens to the old man tottering
to the grave. Those not able to go to the front did duty in the rear, and
the whole male population, excepting cripples and children, was in the
ranks, or the civil service. If any escaped the net of conscription they
were likely to be caught in the round-up made every now and then after
the fashion of the old English press-gang, when all who happened to be in
sight were gathered in, and sent to the army, unless they clearly proved
a title to freedom. In one of these round-ups, says Jones, in his "Diary
of a Rebel War Clerk"--the Postmaster-General of the Confederacy, John H.
Reagan, was carried along with the rest, and detained for some time
before released. Thus the prophecy of Houston was strikingly fulfilled.
Of course, the refugees and deserters, of whom there were a very large
number in the swamps and woods of the South, are excepted from the
statement that the whole population was in arms for the Confederate
cause.

* * *

In the beginning of the war the North was at a disadvantage. Mr. Lincoln
found the little army of the United States scattered and disorganized,
the navy sent to distant quarters of the globe, the treasury bankrupt and
the pub