DURING my voyage home in the China I had an opportunity of
discussing with many intelligent Northern gentlemen all that I had seen in my
Southern travels. We did so in a very amicable spirit, and I think they
rendered justice to my wish to explain to them without exaggeration the state
of feeling amongst their enemies. Although these Northerners belonged to quite
the upper classes, and were not likely to be led blindly by the absurd nonsense
of the sensation press at New York, yet their ignorance of the state of the
case in the South was very great.
The recent successes had given them the impression that the
last card of the South was played. Charleston was about to fall; Mobile,
Savannah, and Wilmington would quickly follow; Lee's army, they thought, was a disheartened,
disorganised mob; Bragg's army in a still worse condition, fleeing before Rosecrans,
who would carry everything before him.
They felt confident that the fall of the Mississippian
fortresses would prevent communication from one bank to the other, and that the
great river would soon be open to peaceful commerce.
All these illusions have since been dispelled, but they
probably still cling to the idea of the great exhaustion of the Southern personnel.
But this difficulty of recruiting the Southern armies is not
so great as is generally supposed. As I have already stated, no Confederate
soldier is given his discharge from the army, however badly he may be wounded;
but he is employed at such labour in the public service as he may be capable of
performing, and his place in the ranks is taken by a sound man hitherto
exempted. The slightly wounded are cured as quickly as possible, and are sent
back at once to their regiments. The women take care of this. The number
actually killed, or who die of their wounds, are the only total losses to the
State, and these form but a small proportion of the enormous butcher's bills,
which seem at first so very appalling.
I myself remember, with General Polk's corps, a fine-looking
man who had had both his hands blown off at the wrists by unskilful
artillery-practice in one of the early battles. A currycomb and brush were
fitted into his stumps, and he was engaged in grooming artillery horses with
considerable skill. This man was called an hostler; and, as the war drags on,
the number of these handless hostlers will increase. By degrees the clerks at
the offices, the orderlies, the railway and post-office officials, and the
stage-drivers, will be composed of maimed and mutilated soldiers. The number of
exempted persons all over the South is still very large, and they can easily be
exchanged for worn veterans. Besides this fund to draw upon, a calculation is
made of the number of boys who arrive each year at the fighting age. These are
all “panting for the rifle,” but have been latterly wisely forbidden the ranks
until they are fit to undergo the hardships of a military life. By these means,
it is the opinion of the Confederates that they can keep their armies recruited
up to their present strength for several years; and, if the worst comes to the
worst, they can always fall back upon their negroes as a last resort; but I do
not think they contemplate such a necessity as likely to arise for a
considerable time.
With respect to the supply of arms, cannon, powder, and
military stores, the Confederates are under no alarm whatever. Augusta
furnishes more than sufficient gunpowder; Atlanta, copper caps, &c. The
Tredegar works at Richmond, and other foundries, cast more cannon than is
wanted; and the Federal generals have always hitherto proved themselves the
most indefatigable purveyors of artillery to the Confederate Government, for
even in those actions which they claim as drawn battles or as victories, such
as Corinth, Murfreesborough, and Gettysburg, they have never failed to make
over cannon to the Southerners without exacting any in return.
My Northern friends on board the China spoke much and
earnestly about the determination of the North to crush out the Rebellion at
any sacrifice. But they did not show any disposition to fight themselves in
this cause, although many of them would have made most eligible recruits; and
if they had been Southerners, their female relations would have made them enter
the army whether their inclinations led them that way or not.
I do not mention this difference of spirit by way of making
any odious comparisons between North and South in this respect, because I feel
sure that these Northern gentlemen would emulate the example of their enemy if
they could foresee any danger of a Southern Butler exercising his infamous sway
over Philadelphia, or of a Confederate Milroy ruling with intolerable despotism
in Boston, by withholding the necessaries of life from helpless women with one
hand, whilst tendering them with the other a hated and absurd oath of
allegiance to a detested Government.
But the mass of respectable Northerners, though they may be
willing to pay, do not very naturally feel themselves called upon to give their
blood in a war of aggression, ambition, and conquest; for this war is
essentially a war of conquest. If ever a nation did wage such a war, the North
is now engaged, with a determination worthy of a more hopeful cause, in
endeavouring to conquer the South; but the more I think of all that I have seen
in the Confederate States of the devotion of the whole population, the more I
feel inclined to say with General Polk — “How can you subjugate such a people
as this?” and even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as
some Northerners have suggested, I never can believe that in the nineteenth
century the civilised world will be condemned to witness the destruction of
such a gallant race.
SOURCE: Sir Arthur James Lyon Fremantle, Three
Months in the Southern States: April-June, 1863, p. 312-6
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