GENERAL ADAMS CLAIMS SOUTHERN SUPPORT FOR HIS CONCLUSION
But General Adams supports his opinion by figures taken from a recent work, "The South in the Building of the Nation." He is thus able to show on the authority of Southern writers themselves, an aggregate estimate of 944,000 enlistments in the Confederate armies—to which he adds 117,000, as the number claimed to have been furnished the Confederate army from the four Border States, making a grand total of 1,061,000 men.
Now, even if the numbers furnished by these Southern writers could be accepted as approximately accurate, the result would be quite different from what General Adams figures. For let me call attention to a memorandum issued by the War Department, U. S. A., May 15, 1905, in which I find this statement: "It is estimated from the best data now obtainable that the re-enlistments in the army during the Civil War numbered 543,393" (p. 4), which is about twenty per cent. of the whole. This number, the military secretary says, must be deducted from the total number of enlistments (2,778,304) to get the actual number of men who were enrolled.
Now, if we apply this same principle and proportion to the alleged enlistment of 944,000 men in the Southern army, we should deduct for re-enlistment 188,800; leaving as the actual number of enlisted men, all told, with the colors and not with the colors, 756,200. And further, though we have no accurate figures concerning the number of men detailed for duties of various kinds,—as clerks, skilled mechanics, gunsmiths, teamsters, cooks, etc.; also details in the medical, quartermaster, commissary, and other supply departments; and as apothecaries, physicians, teachers, nurses, agriculturists, railroad employees, etc.,—we know they numbered many thousands, so that this number—756,200—must be greatly reduced.
It has, indeed, been argued that we cannot make the deduction which the War Office claims in estimating the number of men in the Union armies, as stated above, for the reason that the twelve-months' men in the Confederate armies "were all retained in service for the war" by the Act of April 16, 1862. Again, it is insisted that "substantially all of the regiments enrolled in 1861 remained in service to the end of the war." "It may, then, be assumed that in effect the term of service of all who entered the Confederate armies continued from the time they entered until the end of the War, May 4, 1865." (See Livermore, "Numbers and Losses," p. 52, 53.)
The best way to test the soundness of this conclusion is to look into the actual record of some of the troops, to see whether or not they did re-enlist. If they did, then the same opportunity for error in counting them twice offered itself as in the case of the Union enlistments.
I cite then a few examples of re-enlistment, established beyond doubt.
1. The first Maryland Infantry, spring of 1862.
2. Rodes' Brigade at Yorktown, spring of 1862; the fifth, sixth and twelfth Alabama and twelfth Mississippi regiments.
"They retained their corporate identity, but not simply continued over. At any rate, some men in them did not remain." (Colonel J. W. Mallet, February 16, 1912.)