General Adams is of the opinion that it is a mistake to suppose that the Confederate States were crushed by overwhelming resources and numbers. He calls attention to the statement usually given by Southern writers, that the South had on her muster rolls, from first to last, about 600,000 men, and refers to this as a "legend" (p. 287), "opposed to all reasonable assumption and unsupported by documentary evidence"; "based on assertion only" (p. 286). His argument is chiefly _a priori_, and proceeds substantially thus: The census of 1860 shows there were upward of 5,000,000 white people in the States which subsequently seceded. This represents an arms-bearing population of 1,000,000 men between eighteen and forty-five years of age. To this he adds thirty per cent, for those males between sixteen and eighteen years, and between forty-five and sixty years of age--added by law, so he states, to the military population--making 300,000 more.[1] Now, further add twelve per cent.--or 150,000--for youths reaching, between May, 1861, and May, 1865, the age of sixteen years, and we have a total aggregate Confederate arms-bearing population of 1,450,000.[2] From this total General Adams deducts twenty per cent, for exempts of all classes. "There were then remaining a minimum of 1,160,000 effectives, to which we must add men from the Border States 117,000; giving a total Confederate strength of 1,277,000." He says also: "The whole male arms-bearing population was thus put in arms." Now I wish on the very threshold to acknowledge freely that this conclusion is not, in the opinion of General Adams, discreditable to the South, but the reverse. He holds that the Southern estimate of a total strength of only 600,000 with the Confederate colors, is discreditable to the spirit and the patriotism of our people. In his opinion a just appreciation of the virtue and self-sacrifice exhibited by the men of the South should lead us to accept the much higher estimate which he gives, not reluctantly, but freely and cheerfully. He thinks that we who contest it place the Southern people on a lower level of devotion than the Boers of South Africa. THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THE BOERS AND THE CONFEDERATES He says, at p. 239 of his "Military Studies": "How was it under very similar circumstances with the South Africans? On Confederate showing, they are a braver, a more patriotic, and self-sacrificing race!" He goes on to show that the Boers had in actual service more than 1 in 4 of their population; while, if it be true that there were only 600,000 Southern soldiers in the Confederacy, there was only 1 out of 12 at the front. This, he thinks, would be discreditable to Confederate manhood; he cannot believe that the Southerners of that period were a race of such "mean-spirited, stay-at-home skulkers."