The arguments adduced in the preceding pages are believed by the writer to be valid and sufficient to refute the conclusion reached by Colonel Livermore, the Hon. Charles Francis Adams, and others, that there was in the Confederacy a "minimum of 1,160,000 effectives, to which we must add 117,000 men from the Border States, giving a total Confederate strength of 1,277,000." I have not attempted to give definite figures as to the actual enrollment in the Southern armies. My argument is of necessity largely based on the probabilities of the situation,—it does not profess to be demonstrative, or final. But "probability is the guide of life"; and I believe I have blazed a path by which future students of the subject, having before them the muster rolls of the Confederate army will be able to reach more definite conclusions in this important subject—conclusions, however, not seriously at variance with those stated in these pages.[15]