[230]
From this and other data in my possession, I have thought it might be interesting to deduce something like an approximate estimate of the total strength and losses of the troops furnished by the State of Mississippi. * * *
| Whole number in service | 78,000 |
| Total loss from all causes | 59,250 |
| —— |
| Balance accounted for | 8, 750 |
And of this number about thirty per cent were absent for various causes at the general surrender of the armies.
As to the morale of the army and the causes from which it suffered,
Colonel Power says: ‘Our reverses for the last two years of the war, the despondency, speculation and extortion of many of our people at home, the inability of the government to pay the troops promptly or to furnish them with anything like adequate supplies of food or clothing, the absolute destitution of many families of soldiers and, toward the last, the seeing hopelessness of the struggle, all conspired to depress the soldier's heart.’
On October 16, 1865, the first legislature elected after the war assembled, and the first governor of
Mississippi elected, in his inaugural address, among other things said:
The South, having ventured all on the arbitrament of the sword, has lost all save her honor, and now accepts the result in good faith.
It is our duty to address ourselves to the promotion of peace and order—to the restoration of the law, the faith of the Constitution and the stability and prosperity of the Union; to cultivate amicable relations with our sister States and establish our agricultural and commercial prosperity upon more durable foundations—trusting that the lessons taught by the rebellion will not be lost either to the North or the South: that free men once enlightened will not submit to wrong or injustice, that sectional aggression will meet with sectional resistance, and that the price of political perfidy is blood and carnage.
