Colonel William Preston Johnston, The Life of General Albert Sidney Johnston : His Service in the Armies of the United States, the Republic of Texas, and the Confederate States.

[255] contest. There was a reverse to the picture, however. The North, suddenly checked in its vainglorious boast of subjugating the South in ninety days, sobered itself down to a steadier prosecution of its deadly purpose. Scott and McDowell went into eclipse, and McClellan was called to the work of organization and command. Nevertheless, operations were closed on that line for nearly a year, and the activity of preparation was transferred to the West. In the South an undue and ignorant exultation blinded the masses of the people to the dangers ahead. They could not be made to believe that preparation was necessary to meet the formidable armaments gathering for their destruction. The effects of this fatuous apathy at such a season extended themselves to the close of the war; but the first stunning result was felt by the subject of this memoir, in his efforts to create an army for the defense of the West. This will be seen more fully hereafter.

The map of the Southern States and the distribution of population there evince the odds encountered in the vain struggle for independence. The eleven seceding States, including the present State of Virginia, contained a little more than 5,000,000 whites, and about 3,700,000 negroes, of whom 130,000 were free. The aggregate population of Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Missouri, was about 3,400,000; of whom 2,850,000 were white, 446,000 slaves, and 100,000 free negroes. Nearly one-sixth of their population was black; a fourth belonged to families from Europe or the North; and a twelfth is not a large estimate for persons influenced by party or other considerations to side with the North. Thus, a half of the aggregate population may be counted as in sympathy with the North; but, of the voters and of the rich and intelligent, a great majority were in favor of the South, and the existing local State governments were all in the hands of the State-rights party. But it is one thing to believe in ideas, and another to fight for them; and the troops furnished by these States to the Confederate army-say 40,000 men — were not more than an offset in numbers to the counter-current of Union refugees from East Tennessee and other disaffected localities. Deducting, then, 5,000,000 for the population that supplied the Confederate army with troops, and 4,000,000 for negroes, etc., from the 31,500,000 total population, 22,500,000 represent the available force for men and tribute on which the United States drew, without counting foreign enlistments and negro recruits. But, if Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and West Virginia, are excluded from the calculation altogether, the result still leaves in the South only 5,100,000 whites and 3,700,000 blacks, representing the resisting force, against 19,000,000 of the North.

A brief explanation is necessary to show how these border Commonwealths were so easily transferred from their natural alliance with the South to the side of her adversary. The situation was different in