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THE NUMERICAL STRENGTH
OF THE CONFEDERATE ARMY
THE NUMERICAL
STRENGTH OF THE
CONFEDERATE ARMY
AN EXAMINATION OF THE ARGUMENT
OF THE HON. CHARLES FRANCIS
ADAMS AND OTHERS
BY
RANDOLPH H. McKIM, D.D., LL.D., D.C.L.
Late 1st Lieut, and A. D. C. 3d Brigade Army of Northern
Virginia. Author of "A Soldier's Recollections."
Exigui numero sed bello vivida virtus—Virgil
It will be difficult to get the world to understand
the odds against which we fought.
—General Robert E. Lee
NEW YORK
THE NEALE PUBLISHING COMPANY
1912
Copyright, 1912, by
The Neale Publishing Company
PREFACE
The distinguished soldier and critic whose name appears on the titlepage argues, as do various other Northern critics, that the usualSouthern estimate of the strength of the Confederate army is too smallby half. This conclusion is supported, they contend, both by the censusof 1860, according to which there were at the very beginning of the warbetween the States nearly a million men in the Southern States ofmilitary age, and by the number of regiments of the several armies, asshown by the muster rolls of the Confederate army, captured on Lee'sretreat from Richmond, and now stored among the archives in Washington.This second line of argument has been developed, among others, by twowell-known military critics, Colonel Wm. F. Fox, in his monumental workentitled "Regimental Losses in the Civil War" (who concludes that theSouthern Armies contained the equivalent of 764 regiments, of tencompanies each), and by Thomas L. Livermore, Colonel of the 18th NewHampshire Volunteers, in his laborious and painstaking monograph,"Numbers and Losses in the Civil War in America," published in 1901.
Both these authors have had the advantage of studying the Muster Rollsof the Confederate army just alluded to, but General Marcus J. Wright,of the Adjutant General's Office, War Department, Washington, writes methat he knows of no Southern man who has ever examined these Rolls,although General T. W. Castleman of Louisiana has recently receivedpermission to copy the