ts are but twelve per cent. of
her population, or one hundred and fifty-five thousand): upon this
assumption, the effective force of the Confederacy at the start was but
five hundred and sixty thousand, and if to this we add forty thousand
more for volunteers and conscripts from Maryland, Missouri, Kentucky,
and East Tennessee, we have a capacity for six hundred thousand only. Of
these there has been a continual waste from the outset by sickness,
desertions, capture, and the casualties of war. The Union army has lost
at least one-third, and been reduced from six hundred thousand to four
hundred thousand by such depletion; and in the same ratio, the South,
with inferior supplies and stores, and with greater exposure, must have
lost at least an equal number.

In estimating its present capacity at four hundred thousand men, we
undoubtedly exceed the actual resources of the South. To meet this we
have at least four hundred thousand effective men now in the field, to
be increased to a million by the new levies, and soon to be aided by
thirty mail-clad steamers added to our present fleet on the ocean and
the Mississippi,--a naval force equivalent to at least two hundred
thousand more.

To sustain such forces in the field and on the water will doubtless tax
all the energies of the Union; but how is the inferior force of four
hundred thousand to be clad, fed, and paid by the exhausted Confederacy,
with a white population less than one-sixth of that opposed to them,
without commerce and the mechanic arts, and with no productive
agriculture?

The pecuniary resources of the South for carrying on this war have thus
far consisted principally of a paper currency and bonds, with a forced
circulation. It has drawn little from taxes or forfeiture, although it
has been aided by the appropriation of both public and private property
of the United States.

We have no record of the currency issued, but we know that both prices
and pay have been higher in Southern than in Northern armies; and if
with us it has cost a thousand dollars per annum to sustain a soldier in
the field, it has cost at that rate four hundred and sixty-seven
millions to maintain three hundred and fifty thousand men for the last
sixteen months in the Southern army, and of this at least four hundred
millions has been met by the issue of paper.

Such an issue would be equivalent to an issue of seven times that
amount, or of twenty-eight hundred millions, to be borne