How we triumph over difficulties.
When this war began, there was a disparity in the means of war between the two belligerent countries that made, in the eyes of the outside world, the resistance of the
South something like madness.
The
North had 20,000,000 to our 8,000,000 of population — it had a well- established Government, with all the means of Administration whether in peace or war — It had an army and a navy — It had manufacturing resources of all kinds hardly inferior to any nation on earth — and the whole world open to it from which to enlist men to increase its army, and to import arms and ammunition.
The South had neither army nor navy, nor the means of equipping them — she had few manufactories, and a comparative small population of machinists, the
North having manufactured for her before the war everything she needed, whether for public defence or household economy — her ports were blockaded, and she could only communicate with the world abroad, at great peril, to procure what she had not the skill or capacity to make at home.
With all these disadvantages her Government was just created, and in the slow process of being systematized and made efficient, with resources for administration.
It is wonderful to contemplate, now, how, with this great inequality the
South not only accepted the wager of battle promptly, but repelled successfully the first attacks of the enemy — and further, how we have gone on increasing in spirit and strength with the weight of the war until to-day we are stronger and our cause brighter than ever.
It was not surprising that, considering this inequality, our own people were, many of them, despondent, and feared that we should be overrun before we got ready to resist.
But the sons of the
South in the old army and navy — who were, indeed, the flower of both branches of the old service — came promptly to enlist under her banner.
They found an army of volunteers composed of the most manly and chivalrous men on earth; among these they took their places as leaders, and we had an army drilled and disciplined in time to meet the first assaults of the enemy and drive him back beaten and dispirited.
We all remember how, then, the monster at the head of the
Federal Government called frantically for his hundreds of thousands of additional troops, as he has continued to do ever since, whenever the brave armies of the
South defeated his gigantic plans for our subjugation.
Our early successes made our people overconfident in our own resources, and they underrated those of the enemy.
As a natural consequence, disasters fell upon us; but these have resulted in our salvation.--These reverses, and the contemporary manifestations on the part of the enemy; his truculence, his increasing arrogance and overbearing cruelty, and brutality in all quarters where he had the power to exhibit those qualities,--drove the Confederate Government to those bold and strong measures which have carried us through the war to our present position of strength and triumph.
In every stage of the struggle, thank God, the
South has proved her capacity to elevate herself to the height of the danger and peril in which she was placed.
We have seen how every want has been supplied; if not abundantly, certainly to the extent demanded by necessity.
We see how powder — of which men at one time supposed we could not obtain enough for defence before we were over run — has been plentifully supplied.
We have seen how clothing and shoes, and hats, and blankets, have been created for the army, and how the people have been clothed through the agency of home industry.
We have been astonished at the art and facility displayed in the manufacture of arms, and how the
South produced a specimen of naval architecture of war, in the
Merrimac, that surpassed anything yet produced by the world; and if that vessel was suicidally destroyed, we have proven our ability even to throw away such an engine of defence and still defy the enemy.
In short, we have seen how, when it appeared that almost the last resource had failed, our wants and necessities have been supplied to our own astonishment, and sometimes we may, in truth say, with the appearances of mystery.
The enemy has employed every artifice and strategy that his ingenuity and malice could invent, and every force it was in his power to command.
The negroes were finally brought to swell the great odds against us of his own greatly superior numbers, and the Europeans enlisted by him added to them.
But the negro has not answered his expectations, either by being incited to insurrection and the massacre of our people, nor by his service in the
Federal armies.
On the contrary, he has only proved an element of weakness.
The last expedient tried by the brutal and barbarous foe is that of Famine.
He has sought, by the destruction of provisions, and the burning of mills and
agricultural implements, to starve the people into that submission which his bravery and prowess in battle, with all his immense odds against us, had failed to drive us to. But after a twelve months exertion of this diabolical expedient, we are not only not starved, but there is no danger whatever of any such fate.
This glorious Southern land, teeming with the fruits of the earth, is not the land for starvation.
Until it is a desert the question of starving is preposterous; and even then the faithful and true might look trustingly for the manna from Heaven, for a just and merciful
Providence would never allow a people who could not be subjugated in any other way to fall for the want of food.
But this is the last and least dangerous of all the schemes of infernal origin which the enemy has employed for our ruin.
In spite of his activity with raids of destruction, and cutting lines of transportation, we have passed through the most trying period of the year — that in which transportation and diffusion of the necessaries of life are most difficult.
We are well, hearty, and our people are more healthy than they ever were.
We are in the midst of the season of growing crops, with maturing vegetables and harvesting season approaching.
There is plenty, too, in localities for the supply of the broad extent of the land.
There can be no starvation, and even scarcity may be readily relieved by the means of distribution at command.
The
Yankees must soon learn that Famine is a demon that it may invoke but cannot command to its service.
There never was a people who, from its Past, had stronger reason to confide in the Future than the
Confederate.
Whether we regard the Cause — the brave constancy and manly spirit of the people — the
Government under whose direction the affairs of the
Confederate States have escaped peril and prospered amidst every discouragement — we may look confidingly to the future.
Above all, may we put our faith in that over ruling
providence of whose favors we have to many manifestations.
