"One hand behind its back"

[67th Tigers]

Originally Posted by timewalker

My citation of the number of soldiers in the AoP and AoJ in 1864 was to show that Union manpower was not the inexhaustable supply that Foote and others seem to think it was. If as late as 1864, with the victories in Atlanta, the Union was unable to muster more troops, where was this "other hand" of which Foote speaks going to come from?

The Union was not completely behind the war effort and I do not believe further Confederate victories would have changed this for the better.

No, it's a tricky issue, the number of men in the Federal Army. I have known people that insist there was a million man army out there somewhere. While the muster rolls did have slightly over a million names on them by wars end, the total strength of every department of the US shows somewhere between 200 and 300,000 during this period, with a major low after the 1864 Presidential election when the soldiers from states Lincoln was in danger of losing were furloughed to vote for him, and then half of them didn't come back.

However, Foote is talking about unrestricted conscription, and he kind of has a point, but even Prussia could have raised the numbers bandied about (with about the same population, new territories included, as the Federal States they but about 800,000 men in arms in 1870). However, the situation in 1864 is so bad that 7 out of 8 new enlistees are deserting soon after enlistment....

[whitworth]

"It was an article of faith in the Confederacy that Northern industry would collapse when cut off from its Southern markets and its supply of cotton. Northern industry, on the contrary, grew fat and saucy during the war. Union sea power, despite Confederate raiders, protected freight and passenger service to foreign markets. War's demand stimulated production: in Philadelphia alone 180 new factories were built during the years 1862-64. A government generous in contracts and lavish in expenditures helped to create a new aristocracy of profiteers, who became masters of capital after the war. 1


1. The foundations of fortunes laid during the war were: Armour (meat packing), Havemeyer (sugar), Weyerhaeuser (lumber), Huntington (merchandise and railroads), Remington (guns), Rockefeller (oil), Carnegie (iron and steel), Borden (milk), Marshall Field (merchandise), and Stillman (contraband cotton). There were even a few such in the South -the King Ranch of Texas, for instance.

Source:
p668 The Oxford History of The American People. Samuel Eliot Morison. Oxford University Press. 1965.

[whitworth]

There are tens of thousand of "battle books" read and studied by those interested in the Civil War.

How many ever read a book on Jay Cooke? Not a lot of demand there.

R.E. Lee knew about Jay Cooke. In a letter to his son in early 1863 he wrote, ..."you see the Federal Congress has put the whole power of their country into the hands of their President. Nine hundred millions of dollars & three millions of men. Nothing now can arrest during the present administration the most desolating war that was ever practiced, except a revolution among their people...."

The U.S. was waging a war that even an old army officer could not comprehend, due to the vast amount of money spent on the war. A great deal of that money was raised by a man, few who study the Civil war, ever heard.

One great problem the Confederate founding fathers never considered resolveable, when seceding, was how the U.S. was going to raise the money to send troops into the Southern states. It had never been done, or could be done, prior to Lincoln's time. The Confederate founding fathers had never heard of one Jay Cooke.

Cooke, Jay, 1821–1905, American financier, b. Sandusky, Ohio. He founded Jay Cooke & Company, which marketed the huge Civil War loans of the federal government.