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.
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