that 70,000 of Lee's ragged, barefoot veterans could have swept the 200,000 victors off the field. I have compared, so far as I could, the losses sustained in the great battles of the world since the introduction of fire-arms, and I find only in rare cases have they been so much as a fourth of the troops engaged, and they range from that up to a twentieth. The Confederates thought that battle almost a skirmish in which their losses did not exceed a fourth. The British at Waterloo were pounded for hours by the French artillery, but their loss was but 10,686 out of the 70,000 engaged, or not quite a sixth. At Magenta, the Austrians, out of 125,000, lost but 9,713, or but one-thirteenth; the French, the victors, lost but 6,000 out of 120,000, or one-twentieth. At Sadowa, the Prussians lost but 10,000 out of 200,000 in the battle, or one-twentieth. The Austrians, with an equal number engaged, lost much more heavily, but they were flanked and suffered severely after they were routed. And here I would remark, that to make a comparison fair between the losses in different battles, it should be between the victors and not the vanquished. The loss of the defeated, where cavalry is efficient, or where a flank movement has decided the battle, is always greater after defeat than before it. The true test of the obstinacy of a battle is the loss up to the moment when the shouts of victory rend the sky. Tried by that test, European fighting has been child's play in comparison with Confederate. "I am ashamed for strangers to see my barefoot, ragged boys in camp," said General Lee to an English visitor, "but I would be glad for all the world to see them on the field of battle." This tribute from the great commander is alone sufficient to establish my first point, and I consider it established therefore.
Under the second head, I have shown that Southern statesmen were the first to proclaim the great principles of independence; that Southern-born men have held the Presidential office for nearly three-fourths of the life of the nation; that Southern policy has doubled the area of the United States, and that Southern men have always had, up to the introduction of the new voting element unknown to our ancestors, a controlling influence in the councils of the nation. I will only add now that, up to that time, there never was a stain upon a Southerner, whether as a President, Cabinet officer, Foreign Minister, Congressman, or other employee of the Government. Our Southern statesmen were often rash, hot-headed and intemperate in language, but they would not steal, and they could not be bought by a Ring. This Southern leaven leavened the
