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census of 1860 to show this: Of live stock (milch cows, working oxen, other cattle, sheep and swine) in the Northern States there were two to each person; in the Southern States, five to each person.
Of wheat each person in the Northern States reckoned six bushels; each white person in the Southern States about as much.
Of Indian corn, each person in the Northern States reckoned twenty-eight bushels; while in the Southern States each white person reckoned fifty-one bushels, and white and black together stood for thirty-five bushels per head.
But the South entered the war with only a few insignificant manufactories of arms and materials of war and textile fabrics.
She was soon to be cut off by an encircling blockade from all those supplies upon which she had depended from the North and from Europe in the way of munitions of war, clothing, medicines, etc. She was without the vestige of a navy; while, on the water, the North was to call into existence a power equivalent to a land force of many hundred thousand men.
It had been feared that in the haste of preparation for the mighty contest that was to ensue, the South would find herself poorly provided with arms to contend with an enemy rich in the means and munitions of war. But in respect of small arms, at least, she found herself amply furnished.
Mir. Floyd, the Secretary of War under Mr. Buchanan's administration, had taken occasion to transfer to the different arsenals at the South more than one hundred thousand muskets.
This proceeding was long a favorite theme of reproach and censure in the North, and was most unjustly taken as a proof of incipient treason in Mr. Buchanan's Cabinet.
It was certainly an important assistance to the South (although this contribution of arms was really less than was due her); for without it she would have been hurried into the war with the few and very imperfect arms purchased by the States, or owned by the citizens.1
1 For years the accusation clung to Secretary Floyd that he improperly and fraudulently supplied the South with these muskets, and “the story of the stolen arms” was perpetuated in every variety of Yankee publication. It is strange indeed, as ex-President Buchanan remarks in a recent printed defence of his Administration, “to what extent public prejudice may credit a falsehood, not only without foundation, but against the clearest official evidence.” Let us see how the facts reduce this story of fraud and “treason:” In December, 1859, Secretary Floyd had ordered the removal of one-fifth of the old percussion and flint-lock muskets from the Springfield Armory, where they had accumulated in inconvenient numbers, to five Southern arsenals. The United States had, on hand, say 500,000 of these muskets; 115,000 includes all transferred to the Southern arsenals. And this order of distribution was made, almost a year before Mr. Lincoln's election, and several months before his nomination at Chicago. Again, in 1860, the aggregate of rifles and muskets distributed was 10,151, of which the Southern and Southwestern States received only 2,849, or between one-third and one-fourth of the whole number. It thus appears that the Southern and Southwestern States received much less in the aggregate, instead of more than the quota of arms to which they were justly entitled under the law for arming the militia. Could the force of misrepresentation further go than to torture from these facts the charge that Mr. Buchanan's Secretary of War had fraudulently sent public arms to the South for the use of the insurgents! Yet this is but one example of that audacity and hardy persistence in falsehood displayed in all Northern publications concerning the war.
1866.
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