There is no doubt that Richmond would have been evacuated much sooner
than it was, if it had not been that it was the capital of the so-called
Confederacy, and the fact of evacuating the capital would, of course,
have had a very demoralizing effect upon the Confederate army. When it
was evacuated (as we shall see further on), the Confederacy at once
began to crumble and fade away. Then, too, desertions were taking
place, not only among those who were with General Lee in the
neighborhood of their capital, but throughout the whole Confederacy. I
remember that in a conversation with me on one occasion long prior to
this, General Butler remarked that the Confederates would find great
difficulty in getting more men for their army; possibly adding, though I
am not certain as to this, "unless they should arm the slave."
The South, as we all knew, were conscripting every able-bodied man
between the ages of eighteen and forty-five; and now they had passed a
law for the further conscription of boys from fourteen to eighteen,
calling them the junior reserves, and men from forty-five to sixty to be
called the senior reserves. The latter were to hold the necessary
points not in immediate danger, and especially those in the rear.
General Butler, in alluding to this conscription, remarked that they
were thus "robbing both the cradle and the grave," an expression which I
afterwards used in writing a letter to Mr.
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