Before the close of the war, however, all exemptions in the Confederacy were virtually swept away, and the government enlisted every one able to bear a musket, from the boy hardly in his teens to the old man tottering to the grave. Those not able to go to the front did duty in the rear, and the whole male population, excepting cripples and children, was in the ranks, or the civil service. If any escaped the net of conscription they were likely to be caught in the round-up made every now and then after the fashion of the old English press-gang, when all who happened to be in sight were gathered in, and sent to the army, unless they clearly proved a title to freedom. In one of these round-ups, says Jones, in his "Diary of a Rebel War Clerk"--the Postmaster-General of the Confederacy, John H. Reagan, was carried along with the rest, and detained for some time before released. Thus the prophecy of Houston was strikingly fulfilled. Of course, the refugees and deserters, of whom there were a very large number in the swamps and woods of the South, are excepted from the statement that the whole population was in arms for the Confederate cause. * * * In the beginning of the war the North was at a disadvantage. Mr. Lincoln found the little army of the United States scattered and disorganized, the navy sent to distant quarters of the globe, the treasury bankrupt and the public service demoralized. Floyd and his fellow-conspirators had done their work thoroughly. It did not take long for the people of the North to rally to the defence of the government, and for an army to be formed capable not only of defending the loyal States, but of striking a blow at the Confederacy. With the National credit restored, an abundance of currency provided for national needs, and the public departments cleared of Southern sympathizers, the North entered upon a conflict which could have but one ending should the North remain steadfast. The weakness of the South, from a military standpoint, was in the fact that men lost could not be replaced. The North could replenish its depleted armies; the South could not. With men therefore of the same race and equal in soldierly qualities arrayed against each other, one side within measurable distance of exhaustion and the other with inexhaustible human resources to draw upon, the war became an easy sum in arithmetic, provided the stronger party should not cry "enough" before the weaker had reached the exhaustion point. The battles on comparatively equal terms were fought, therefore, in the early part of the war, the decisive battles in 1863, and the closing struggle between the gasping Confederacy and the Union stronger than ever, in the last fifteen months of the conflict.