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for military duty and who had afterwards been 'drafted' for service to escape their duties by the undemocratic expedient of finding a substitute or of paying $300. That provision was naturally much resented by the poorer classes, and especially by alien immigrants in the large towns. The Opposition made the utmost use of their opportunity, denounced the Government, and incited the masses to resistance. The Provost-Marshal-General's Report tells us that the people were incited against the Government 'by the machinations of a few disloyal political leaders, aided by the treasonable utterances of corrupt and profligate newspapers . . . by a steady stream of political poison and arrant treason.' While the Government was obeyed in the country, these incitements led to sanguinary riots among the worst alien elements in several towns, especially in New York, Boston, and Troy. A large part of New York was during several days devastated by the mob, and the suppression of the rising cost more than 1000 lives. When order had been re-established Mr. Horatio Seymour, the Governor of New York, expressed doubt whether conscription was constitutionally permissible, and asked President Lincoln to obtain a judicial decision on that point. The President replied on August 7:

... We are contending with an enemy who, as I understand, drives every able-bodied man he can reach into his ranks, very much as a butcher drives bullocks into a slaughter-pen. No time is wasted, no argument is used.

This produces an army which will soon turn upon our now victorious soldiers already in the field, if they shall not be sustained by recruits as they should be. It produces an army with a rapidity not to be matched on our side, if we first waste time to re-experiment with the voluntary system, already deemed by Congress, and palpably in fact, so far exhausted as to be inadequate; and then more time to obtain a court decision as to whether the law is constitutional which requires a part of those not now in the service to go to the aid of those who are already in it, and still more

time to determine with absolute certainty that we get those who are to go in the precisely legal proportion to those who are not to go.

My purpose is to be in my action just and constitutional, and yet practical, in performing the important duty with which I am charged-of maintaining the unity and the free principles of our common country.

Shortly afterwards conscription was enforced throughout New York with the energetic assistance of Governor Seymour, who clearly recognised the pertinence of the President's arguments.

Let us now consider the principal facts and figures relating to the Civil War.

It began on April 12, 1861, with the bombardment of Fort Sumter; it ended on April 9, 1865, with the surrender of General Lee and his army to General Grant at Appomattox Court House. Except for three days the war lasted exactly four years. The history of the Civil War is at the same time inspiring and humiliating. It is inspiring because of the patriotism, the heroism, the ability, and the resourcefulness which were displayed by both combatants. Both showed that it was possible to improvise huge and powerful armies. It is deeply humiliating because the Civil War is a gigantic monument of democratic improvidence and of unreadiness, of governmental short-sightedness, and of criminal waste, of bungling, and of muddle. The North possessed so overwhelming a superiority in population and in resources of every kind, and had had so ample a warning of the threatening danger long before the trouble began, that the war would probably never have broken out had the Northern statesmen exercised in time some ordinary foresight and caution, as they easily might have done and as they ought to have done. If some precautions had been taken, and if, nevertheless, the Southern States had revolted, their subjection might have been effected within a few months at a comparatively trifling expenditure of blood and treasure. How crushing the numerical superiority

of the North was over the South will be seen from the Census figures of 1860, which supply the following picture:

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If we compare the total population of the antagonists, it appears that the North had twenty-five inhabitants to every ten in the South, both white and coloured. However, as the Southern negroes did not furnish soldiers during the war, we must deduct their number. Thus we find that for every ten possible combatants in the South there were no fewer than forty in the North. In 1860 the Northern States had two-and-a-half times as many inhabitants and four times as many men able to bear arms as had the Southern States. In addition, the Northern States possessed infinitely greater wealth, and infinitely greater resources of every kind, than did their opponents. James Ford Rhodes, in his excellent History of the United States from the Compromise of 1850,' briefly and correctly compared their position as follows:

The Union had much greater wealth, was a country of a complex civilisation, and boasted of its varied industries; it combined the farm, the shop, and the factory. The Confederacy was but a farm, dependent on Europe and on the North for everything but bread and meat, and before the war for much of those. The North had the money market, and could borrow with greater ease than the South. It was the iron age. The North had done much to develop its wealth of iron, that potent aid of civilisation, that necessity of war; the South had scarcely touched its own mineral resources. In nearly every Northern regiment were mechanics of all kinds and men of business training accustomed to system, while the Southern army was made up of gentlemen and poor whites, splendid fighters of rare courage and

striking devotion, but as a whole inferior in education and in a knowledge of the arts and appliances of modern life to the men of the North. The Union had the advantage of the regular Army and Navy, of the flag, and of the prestige and machinery of the national Government; the Ministers from foreign countries were accredited to the United States; the archives of what had been the common Government were also in the possession of the Union.

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From the official statistics available it appears that the wealth of the Union was in 1860 about fifteen times as great as that of the Southern States, which were merely producers of food and raw materials. In the course of the war the economic supremacy of the North increased very greatly, for while the manufacturing power of the Northern States expanded rapidly, the economic position of the Southern States deteriorated continually. Northern warships blockaded the coast of the South, and the Southerners could neither sell their staple products-especially cotton and tobacco-nor import the machines, weapons, and manufactures of every kind which they needed. While the North was self-supporting and could freely import from abroad all it required, the South was thrown on its own resources, and before long the people lacked even the most essential things. Hence their sufferings were terrible, while the people in the North lived in relative comfort and affluence.

The people, both in the South and in the North, made a most gigantic military effort. The Secretary of War laid before Congress information from which it appeared that the Northern States furnished altogether the gigantic number of 2,653,062 soldiers. If this colossal aggregate is reduced to a three-years' standard, they furnished no less than 2,129,041 men. If we compare this figure with the total population of the Northern States given above, we find that the North sent to the army 10 per cent. of the total population. The official figures relating to the military effort of the South are incomplete and not reliable.

Estimates vary. However, when we draw the average of the various estimates it appears that the Southern States furnished to the army about one million men, or approximately 20 per cent. of the white population.

The war entailed colossal losses in men and money. According to the accounts furnished in the Official Record the war losses of the Northern Army were as follows:

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These figures are considered by many authorities to be an under-statement. Some estimate that the Northern States lost approximately 500,000 lives through the war. Through death the Northern Armies lost about 20 per cent. of their men, and the losses come to about 2 per cent. of the whole population. The war losses of the Southern States were approximately as great as those of the North. Apparently about one-half of the Southern Army died, and the deaths caused by the war equal almost 10 per cent. of the white population of the South. Altogether the American States combined lost between 700,000 and 1,000,000 lives in four years' warfare.

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