6 ernment could bring to bear on the revolted States to state it merely in the ratio of the population of the two sections:—twenty millions in the loyal States against eight in the revolting States. But it is proper to consider that the rebels had within themselves a slave population >of over four millions, an,d that this population was able to carry on all their simple industries, which it required more than double that number to carry on the much more complicated industries of northern civilization. It is thus apparent that the whole fighting white population of the South was vailable for service in the field, while nearly half of our own population was necessarily neutralized in the way just mentioned. It is not wonderful, therefore, that the rebel leaders were able to put into the afield, at the very start, armies nearly equal to our own, though our own levies were unparalleled in history. To this must be added the astonishing aseendancy which a small minority of leading men had required over the southern population, and by which, when they had once usurped power, they were able to wield an absolutely despotic control over all the resources of men and material in the South. These men, in fact, had long been preparing for this war, as many of them publicly confessed after the inauguration of the rebellion. “We have,” said Mr. Barnwell Rhett in a speech in the convention which took South Carolina out of the Union, “ we have been engaged in this war for more than thirty years. It is no consequence of Lincoln's election or the failure to execu te the fugitive slave law, but we have been ingaged in this war for more than thirty years'' It is a thread-bare story how Buchanan’s infamous secretary had, for the last twelve months of that administration, bent all his energies to furnish forth the rebels with all they needed for their premeditated treason. It is a matter of official record that by the robbery of forts and arsenals, and by purchase from abroad, Floyd had distributed at various convenient points throughout the South 707,000 stands of arms and 200,000 revolvers. Even before Mr. Lincoln’s inauguration there were thirty thousand men under arms inthe South; and two days after that inauguration the Confederate Congress passed a bill to raise an army of a hundred thousand men. And this, bear in mind, was at a time when the United States Government had not under its control an organized force of five thousand men. To enhance the difficulty of the task imposed on the administration, the theory of the war into which it was driven by the very nature of the contest was that of the offensive. Now military history is replete with illustrations of the enormous advantage which a people has when able to stand at bay (covering its own communications and holding interior lines) and await in chosen positions the attacks of the enemy. The career of Frederick the Great affords an eminent example of a small nation, never able te raise an army of over a hundred thousand men, conducting a defensive war, (with offensive returns,) and successfully resisting for seven years the attempts of a collision of five of the leading Powers of Europe. But offensive operations against a people holding such defensive attitude becomes ten fold more difficult hen the war becomes what is ©ailed a “ national war,” the nature of rich is thus depicted by the greatest modern writer on the theory of r, General Jbmini;
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=