[164] were largely engaged, besides in the production of the usual Southern crops, in furnishing the fruits of their orchards and the output of their fisheries to commerce. The inexhaustible beds of iron ore and manganese and coal of Georgia and Alabama and Tennessee were still unexplored, and the vast quarries of Georgia marble and granite, now yielding rich profits to Northern investments, were then overlooked and unworked.
It can be imagined that a territory like this, unprepared for war and sustaining an ignorant slave population which amounted to at least two-fifths of the whole number of persons, suddenly confronted by an armed conflict, and at once invested by vigorous, watchful, and competent blockading fleets, full of natural resources, deficient in organized industries, rich in the possession of men of intellect and executive capacity, would be met by a situation calling forth every talent and resource of its people.
Side by side in the columns of the newspapers, with the stirring appeals to patriotism in editorial language and poetic meter, were official orders and advertisements; and scientific and literary men vied with one another in publishing suggestions and hints and descriptions of processes that would be useful in directing the minds of the people toward solving the problem of supplying necessary munitions of war, and all the articles for camp and field and hospital and household use.
To say nothing of the destruction of property and of the whole labor system of the South, with its attendant losses, some idea of the extent of the effects of that war may be gathered by reciting a few facts from official data.
Eleven out of the thirty-four States seceded. The men of military age, from eighteen to forty-five on the Southern side numbered 1,064,193, including lame, halt and blind, etc. On the Union side were more than four to one, or 4,559,892, not estimating monthly accessions from the world at large. In enlisted men the numbers were, for the South, 600,000; for the North, 2,865,000. The slave States of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, West Virginia and Tennessee, gave to the Union 300,000 men. Thus there were in the field four armies of the North, each as large as the entire Confederate forces, not including the 300,000 contributed by the slave States.
In numbers the Federal loss was 67,058 killed and 43,012 died of wounds; of Confederates, 53,873 were killed, and 194,026
