These are exemptions under the Confederate States' law in seven States, and in parts of two States. They do not include the States west of the Mississippi. But in addition to these there were many thousand exemptions under purely State laws. We have no complete record of these last; but in the State of Georgia alone we have a record of 11,031 such exemptions.
7.—We must also consider the large numbers of men employed on the railroads, in the government departments, in State offices, and in the various branches of manufacture necessary for the support of the army and of the people; and in directing the agricultural labor of the slaves. Factories were started for making swords, bayonets, muskets, percussion caps, powder, cartridges, cartridge boxes, belts, and other equipment; for clothing, for caps and shoes, for harness and saddles, for artillery-caissons and carriages; for guns, cannon and powder.
I have already referred to the statement of General Kemper that in December, 1864, "the returns of the bureau, obviously imperfect and partial, show 28,035 men in the State of Virginia between eighteen and forty-five, exempt and detailed for all causes." The South having an agricultural population, it was necessary, as just said, when war came, to organize manufactories of every kind of equipment for the army.
After all, the most important question to determine is the number of men actually serving with the colors in the armies of the Confederate States. And 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 General Cooper and other Southern authorities had in mind.
We know approximately the respective numbers in the great battles of the war, and I submit that these numbers are far more consistent with the maximum of 600,000 serving with the colors than with the maximum of 1,200,000.[9] If, indeed, the Confederacy had been able to muster in arms a million two hundred thousand men, it is greatly to the discredit of their able generals that never in any one battle were they able to confront the enemy with more than 80,000 men.
But our gallant and generous friend taxes us, as we have seen, with casting discredit upon the patriotism of the South by our claim that we had no more than six or seven hundred thousand men in the field. Is he justified in this opinion? Let us see how the matter stands.
THE MILITARY POPULATION OF THE CONFEDERACY
In the month of May, 1862, as we have shown above, at least one-fourth of the Southern territory had been wrenched from the control of the Confederate Government. In the territory remaining there was in round numbers a population of about 3,800,000 souls. The military population then should have been 760,000.
To this must be added, by the extension of the military age down to seventeen, and up to fifty, ten per cent.—that is, in all, six additional years, 76,000.