November 13, 1862---A first: Texas runs out of rifles

NOVEMBER 13, 1862:        

Texas Governor Richard Lubbock writes to Jefferson Davis regarding the ability of his State to comply with the Draft. His letter reads in part:

“…Let me assure Your Excellency that Texas is almost denuded of her best fighting men. We have over 50 Regts in the Confederate service very few of which are in the state. We are also very badly off for arms…We have an immense frontier and sea country to look after both of which, is now seriously threatened with invasion. May I hope under the circumstances that you will for the present suspend the enforcement of the new conscript law within our state…if the new laws be imposed I do not believe I can get [the troops]…our People are really uneasy…hence the great reluctance to see any more men leave the state at this time. I have at all times and on all occasions assisted in sending men out of the State to scenes of war action and I dislike now to admit that we should send no more…I of course only speak for Texas, I know not how it is in other localities. Can you not spare us a few thousand arms for this state. If we could get back the old rifles and shotguns that have been taken off by our men…we would feel better able to defend our state. If I could be assured of any firearms I would send an agent to attend to their transportation…Will you not send an order to the Commanding General suspending the late act for the present within the state of Texas.”

In what is a harbinger of the fate of the Confederacy, Lubbock not only asks to see the Draft suspended in Texas, but asks for guns to defend the State. The Union may be struggling on the battlefield, but it is clearly winning the war of attrition in manpower and manufacturing.

President Lincoln himself darkly acknowledged the Union’s superiority in numbers after the Battle of Fredericksburg: Despite the “awful arithmetic” of losing 13,000 men opposed to the Confederacy’s 6,000, Lincoln said that if Fredericksburg was fought “over again, every day through a week of days…the army under Lee would be wiped out to its last man, the Army of The Potomac would still be a mighty host, the war would be over, the Confederacy gone.”