Our principal
The currency, the production of supplies for the soldiers and people, and the increased efficiency of the army, are three momentous which demand the most energetic and yet the most thoughtful and intelligent of Congress.
The first is the most difficult of solution, but the time for discussing it has passed.
The second, the production of supplies, is a question involving the efficiency of the army even more than an increased number of troops.
We have already enough men on the muster rolls of the army, if they can be brought to their posts.
But we have not enough force engaged in the the army and the people, and those must be fed, or the work of subjugation is accomplished.
We can whip the
Yankees, but starvation is an enemy that the thousands people are unable to resist.
We have not yet reached this dire extremely, but the enormous prices of all the adversities of life and clothing are sorely taking the capacities of the people, and give us a warning to develop all our energies and husband all our resources to provide for the future.
Congress should look this danger steadfastly in the face, and be ware how it adopts a policy which will diminish in any degree the productive power of the country.
It should not permit itself to be driven from its propriety by occasional military disasters, even of so grave a character as that at
Chickamauga.
If
General Bragg's defeat was attributable, as we are inclined to believe, to a want of men, there is a ready mode of supplying that deficiency without extending the conscript age, and increasing the consumers and diminishing the producers of the country.
The muster rolls of
Gen. Bragg's army call for one hundred and four thousand men; yet he fought his battles with only about forty thousand.
The rest were detailed in various departments — quartermaster, commissary and hospital departments, ward-masters, nurses, stewards, and wagoners, besides a host of stragglers and deserters.--Bring back the stragglers and deserters to their duty; substitute disabled soldiers for all able-bodied men detailed in other departments, and put negroes in the place of wagoners.
The same remarks apply to other Confederate armies which have been diminished in like proportion with that of
Gen. Bragg, and from the same causes.
Let Congress devote itself to making the army as strong in numbers as upon the muster rolls, and beware how it drawn upon the producing population to increase the number of mouths to be fed, whilst by the same process it diminishes the means of feeding them, and adds to the army only infirm and incompetent men, who are rendering invaluable service where they are, but would only fill the hospitals if placed in the field.
The only effective military service that men outside the conscript age can render, is in home organizations against raids, which will enable them to guard against one of the most injurious annoyances we suffer from the enemy, and this can be accomplished either by Confederate or State legislation.--Anything beyond this should not be thought of for a moment.
The army of producers is as essential to the achievement of our independence as the army of soldiers, and neither can be diminished with safety cause.
The men of the world generally found between the ages of 18 and 45, and it is only exceptional cases that they are fit for military duty beyond this limit.
Let Congress act with prudence as well as with rigor, for there are tremendous interests at stake.
