A wise prophet, basing his prophecies upon the patent facts of the situation, could not have failed to foretell the outcome of such a war with precision and certainty. The utmost that the South could do--even by "robbing the cradle and the grave" as was wittily and sadly said at the time, was to put 600,000 men into the field, first and last. The North was able to enlist an aggregate of 2,778,304, or, if we reduce this to a basis of three years' service for each man, the Union enlistments for three full years numbered no less than 2,326,168--or nearly four times the total enlistments in the Confederate army from beginning to end of the war. Yet the Confederate armies included practically every white man in the South who was able to bear arms. There was in effect a levy _en masse_, including the entire white male population from early boyhood to extreme old age. Again the Federal Government had a navy and the Confederates none. It was certain from the beginning that the Federal authorities would completely shut the South in by blockading and closely sealing every southern port. Thus the Federals--as was apparent in advance--were destined to have the whole world to draw upon for soldiers, for supplies, for ammunition, for improved arms and for everything else that contributes to military strength, while the South must rely absolutely upon itself--ill armed, and unequipped with anything except courage, devotion and heroic fortitude. There were no facilities at the South for the manufacture of arms. There was not an armory in all that land that could turn out a musket of the pattern then in use, not a machine shop that could convert a muzzle-loading rifle into a breech-loader or give to any gun so much as a choke bore. There were foundries that could cast iron cannon of an antique pattern, but not one that could make a modern gun. There were machine shops--a very few--in which the Northern-made locomotives then in use on Southern railroads could be repaired in a small way, but there was not in all the South a shop in which a useful locomotive could be built. Nor were there any car builders who had had experience in the making of rolling stock fit for service.