As the undoubted spring campaign approached, a northern journalist tried to ascertain the rebel strength. He came up with numbers in all the southern armies and suggested that “Anaconda” might be squeezing the South into much greater self-reliance.
From a Seneca County, New York newspaper in March 1864:
Strength and Position of the Rebel Armies.
A Nashville correspondent of the Philadelphia Inquirer
furnished a detailed statement, apparently prepared with some reference to the facts, of the strength and position of the rebel armies. He likewise pays his respects to the “starvation theory,” in the following paragraph:
“Since Gen. Sherman has penetrated the heart of the Confederate States, his scouts have reported to these headquarters that the country through which he has marched abounds in life’s necessaries for man and beast. The people who heretofore had depended upon the manufactures and mechanism of the North, for the simplest commodities of universal use, now loom up as a fraternity conversant with all the arts and sciences in vogue throughout the hemispheres. Such a people, who have grown from a hillock to a mountain in mechanical immensity, must be attentively watched during the next four months, lest they achieve successes which must postpone the termination of hostilities for a long time.”
The following is a summary of the information he communicates relative to the military of the South. Our readers can take it for what it is worth:
Portions of these figures may appear huge to some, but we will yet find, in a short time, that they are not out of the way.
Apparently Union general and Ohio congressman James Garfield also thought the rebels had big numbers. From the Richmond Daily Dispatch March 23, 1864:
The Strength of the “Rebels,”
“Gen. Garfield,” says the Nashville Press, “in his address at the Sanitary Fair in Cleveland, made the significant remark that, from facts in his possession, he was led to believe the rebels were never stronger than now. This may be regarded as semi-official, Mr. Garfield being a prominent member of the House Military Committee, (Yankee.”)
