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sequently incorporated into the division of General A. P. Hill, and participated in the battles around Richmond."

He has no official data by which to determine their numbers, but, from careful estimates and conference with General Anderson, he estimates the strength of the two at 4,000 effective.

Subsequent to the date of the return of the army around Richmond, heretofore given, but previous to the battle of Seven Pines, General Johnston was reënforced by General Huger's division of three brigades. The total strength of these three brigades, according to the "Reports of the Operations of the Army of Northern Virginia," was 5,008 effectives. Taylor says:

"If the strength of these five be added to the return of May 21st, we shall have sixty-two thousand six hundred and ninety-six (62,696) as the effective strength of the army under General Johnston on May 31, 1862.

"Deduct the losses sustained in the battle of Seven Pines as shown by the official reports of casualties, say 6,084, and we have 56,612 as the effective strength of the army when General Lee assumed command."

There have been various attempts made to point out the advantage which might have been obtained if General Lee, in succeeding to the command, had renewed on the 1st of June the unfinished battle of the 31st of May; and the representation that he commenced his campaign, known as the "Seven Days' Battles," only after he had collected a great army, instead of moving with a force not greatly superior to that which his predecessor had, has led to the full exposition of all the facts bearing upon the case. In the "Southern Historical Society Papers," June, 1876, is published an extract from an address of Colonel Charles Marshall, secretary and aide-de-camp to General R. E. Lee, before the Virginia Division of the Army of Northern Virginia. In it Colonel Marshall quotes General J. E. Johnston as saying:

"General Lee did not attack the enemy until the 26th of June, because he was employed from the 1st until then in forming a great army by bringing to that which I had commanded 15,000 men from North Carolina under Major-General Holmes, 22,000

men from South Carolina and Georgia, and above 16,000 men from the Valley,' in the divisions of Jackson and Ewell," etc.

These numbers added together make 53,000. Colonel Marshall then proceeds, from official reports, to show that all these numbers were exaggerated, and that one brigade, spoken of as seven thousand strong-that of General Drayton-was not known to be in the Army of Virginia until after the "seven days," and that another brigade, of which General Johnston admitted he did not know the strength, Colonel Marshall thought it safer to refer to as the "unknown brigade," which, he suggests, may have been "a small command under General Evans, of South Carolina, who did not join the army until after it moved from Richmond."

General Holmes's report, made July 15, 1862, states that on the 29th of June he brought his command to the north side of the James River, and was joined by General Wise's brigade. With this addition, his force amounted to 6,000 infantry and six batteries of artillery. General Ransom's brigade had been transferred from the division of General Holmes to that of General Huger a short time before General Holmes was ordered to join General Lee. The brigade of General Branch had been detached at an earlier period; it was on duty near to Hanover Junction, and under the command of General J. E. Johnston before the battle of Seven Pines. These facts are mentioned to account for the small size of General Holmes's division, which had been reduced to two brigades. Ripley's brigade on the 26th of June was reported to have an aggregate force of 2,366, including pioneers and the ambulance corps. General Lawton's brigade, when moving up from Georgia to Richmond, was ordered to change direction, and join General Jackson in the Valley. He subsequently came down with General Jackson, and reports the force which he led into the battle of Cold Harbor, on the 27th of June, 1862, as 3,500 men.

General Lee, after the battle of Seven Pines, had sent two large brigades under General Whiting to coöperate with General Jackson in the Valley, and to return with him, according to instructions furnished. These brigades were in the battle of Seven Pines, and were counted in the force of the army when

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General Lee took command of it. Lawton's Georgia brigade, as has been stated, was diverted from its destination for a like temporary service, and is accounted for as reënforcements brought from the south. These three brigades, though coming with Jackson and Ewell, were not a part of their divisions, and, if their numbers are made to swell the force which Jackson brought, they should be elsewhere subtracted.

General J. A. Early, in the same number of the "Historical Society Papers," in a letter addressed to General J. E. Johnston, February 4, 1875, makes an exhaustive examination from official reports, and applies various methods of computation to the question at issue. Among other facts, he states:

"Drayton's brigade did not come to Virginia until after the battles around Richmond. It was composed of the Fifteenth South Carolina and the Fiftieth and Fifty-first Georgia Regiments and Third South Carolina Battalion. A part, if not all, of it was engaged in the fight at Secessionville, South Carolina, on the 16th of June, 1862. Its first engagement in Virginia was on the Rappahannock, 25th of August, 1862. After Sharpsburg, it was so small that it was distributed among some other brigades in Longstreet's corps."

After minute inquiry, General Early concludes that "the whole command that came from the Valley, including the artillery, the regiment of cavalry, and the Maryland regiment and a battery, then known as 'The Maryland Line,' could not have exceeded 8,000 men." In this, General Early does not include either Lawton's brigade or the two brigades with Whiting, and reaches the conclusion that "the whole force received by General Lee was about 23,000-about 30,000 less than your estimate."

Taking the number given by General Early as the entire reenforcement received by General Lee after the battle of Seven Pines and before the commencement of the seven days' battles -which those who know his extreme accuracy and minuteness of inquiry will be quite ready to do-and deducting from the 23,000 the casualties in the battle of Seven Pines (6,084), we have 16,916; if to this be added whatever number of absentees may have joined the army in anticipation of active operations, a number which I have no means of ascertaining, the result

will be the whole increment to the army with which General Lee took the offensive against McClellan.

It appears from the official returns of the Army of the Potomac that on June 20th General McClellan had present for duty 115,102 men. It is stated that McClellan reached the James River with "between 85,000 and 90,000 men," and that his loss in the seven days' battles was 15,249; this would make the army 105,000 strong at the commencement of the battles.* Probably General Dix's corps of 9,277 men, stationed at Fortress Monroe, is not included in this last statement.

CHAPTER XXV.

Forced Emancipation.-Purposes of the United States Government at the Commencement of 1862.-Subjugation or Extermination.-The Willing Aid of United States Congress.-Attempt to legislate the Subversion of our Social Institutions. Could adopt any Measure Self-Defense would justify.-Slavery the Cause of all Troubles, therefore must be removed.-Statements of President Lincoln's Inaugural.—Declaration of Sumner.-Abolition Legislation.— The Power based on Necessity.-Its Formula.-The System of Legislation devised. Confiscation.-How permitted by the Law of Nations.-Views of Wheaton; of J. Q. Adams; of Secretary Marcy; of Chief-Justice Marshall.— Nature of Confiscation and Proceedings.-Compared with the Acts of the United States Congress.-Provisions of the Acts.-Five Thousand Millions of Property involved. Another Feature of the Act.-Confiscates Property within Reach.Procedure against Persons.-Held us as Enemies and Traitors.-Attacked us with the Instruments of War and Penalties of Municipal Law.-Emancipation to be secured.-Remarks of President Lincoln on signing the Bill.-Remarks of Mr. Adams compared.—Another Alarming Usurpation of Congress.— Argument for it.-No Limit to the War-Power of Congress; how maintained.— The Act to emancipate Slaves in the District of Columbia.-Compensation promised. Remarks of President Lincoln.-The Right of Property violated.— Words of the Constitution.-The Act to prohibit Slavery in the Territories.— The Act making an Additional Article of War.-All Officers forbidden to return Fugitives.-Words of the Constitution.-The Powers of the Constitution unchanged in Peace or War.-The Discharge of Fugitives commanded in the Confiscation Act.-Words of the Constitution.

Ar the commencement of the year 1862 it was the purpose of the United States Government to assail us in every manner and at every point and with every engine of destruction which

*Swinton's "History of the Army of the Potomac."

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could be devised. The usual methods of civilized warfare consist in the destruction of an enemy's military power and the capture of his capital. These, however, formed only a small portion of the purposes of our enemy. If peace with fraternity and equality in the Union, under the Constitution as interpreted by its framers, had been his aim, this was attainable without war; but, seeking supremacy at the cost of a revolution in the entire political structure, involving a subversion of the Constitution, the subjection of the States, the submission of the people, and the establishment of a union under the sword, his efforts were all directed to subjugation or extermination. Thus, while the Executive was preparing immense armies, iron-clad fleets, and huge instruments of war, with which to invade our territory and destroy our citizens, the willing aid of an impatient, enraged Congress was invoked to usurp new powers, to legislate the subversion of our social institutions, and to give the form of legality to the plunder of a frenzied soldiery.

That body had no sooner assembled than it brought forward the doctrine that the Government of the United States was engaged in a struggle for its existence, and could therefore resort to any measure which a case of self-defense would justify. It pretended not to know that the only self-defense authorized in the Constitution for the Government created by it, was by the peaceful method of the ballot-box; and that, so long as the Government fulfilled the objects of its creation (see preamble of the Constitution), and exercised its delegated powers within their prescribed limits, its surest and strongest defense was to be found in that ballot-box.

The Congress next declared that our institution of slavery was the cause of all the troubles of the country, and therefore the whole power of the Government must be so directed as to remove it. If this had really been the cause of the troubles, how easily wise and patriotic statesmen might have furnished a relief. Nearly all the slaveholding States had withdrawn from the Union, therefore those who had been suffering vicariously might have welcomed their departure, as the removal of the cause which disturbed the Union, and have tried the experiment of separation. Should the trial have brought more