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of the enemy, at the time of the evacuation of Yorktown, to have been from 100,000 to 120,000.
The same report puts his numbers on the 26th of June at about 180,000, and the specific information obtained regarding their organization warrants the belief that this estimate did not exceed his actual strength.”
He seems to have been troubled all the time with the spectre of “overwhelming numbers” opposed to him, and that he should have believed so when he had “Professor Lowe” with his balloons to make reports from the clouds, and his “Chief of the secret service” and “intelligent contrabands,” to fool him with their inventions, may be perhaps conceded by some charitable persons, but that he should have written such nonsense as the above in 1863, and published it in 1864, is perfectly ridiculous.
If the United States Government with its gigantic resources and its population of 21,000,000 of whites could bring into the field for the advance on Richmond only 105,000 men, and some fifty or sixty thousand men for the defence of Washington, how was the Confederate Government, with its limited means, its blockaded ports, and its population of less than 6,000,000 of whites, to bring into the field, to oppose this one of several large armies of invasion, 180,000 men, and if it could get the men where were the arms to come from?
When I was at General Lee's headquarters, on the night of the 28th of June, at Gaines' house, General Longstreet, who occupied a part of the same house and had accompanied General Lee from the commencement of the operations on McClellan's flank and rear, informed me that, when the movement commenced, we had about 90,000 men in all, including Jackson's command, 60,000 being employed in the movement north of the Chickahominy, and 30,000 being left on the south side for the protection of Richmond.
This latter number included the troops at Drewry's Bluff and Chaffin's Bluff.
This statement was elicited in reply to a question by me, in which I expressed some surprise at the boldness of the
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