An army of 500,000 men could not conquer the whole South in five years. And if it could? Eight or ten millions of Anglo-Saxons lying exhausted at our feet, with an undying hatred in their hearts. It would no longer be a government of consent, but a military despotism.
Original passage & context
"we may then say that an army of 500,000 men could not conquer the whole South in five years. [...] Simply this: eight or ten millions of Anglo-Saxons, lying exhausted at our feet—with an undying hatred in their hearts against us, ready to rebel again and again on every emergency [...] It would no longer be a government of consent, but a military despotism."
Three days before the first shot, an anti-war Democratic paper does the arithmetic and gets it very nearly right. The Union would enlist roughly 2.1 million men over four years; the war ran from April 1861 to April 1865; federal troops occupied the South until 1877. The paper is arguing against coercion, not forecasting for its own sake — but the estimate stands. Three passages joined with [...].
Read it in the original — Indianapolis Daily State Sentinel, Apr 9, 1861 ↗