a poisonous snake in the grass behind.

The Indians would have preferred neutrality between the two kinds
of inevitably dispossessing whites. But neutrality was impossible
in what was then the Far West. Not ten thousand Indians fought
for both sides put together. On the whole they fought well as
skirmishers, though they rarely withstood shell fire, even when
their cover was good and their casualties small.

The ten times more numerous negroes were naturally a much more
serious factor. The North encouraged the employment of colored
labor corps and even colored soldiers, especially after
Emancipation. But the vast majority of negroes, whether slave or
free, either preferred or put up with their Southern masters,
whom they generally served faithfully enough either in military
labor corps or on the old plantations. As the colored population
of the South was three and a half millions this general fidelity
was of great importance to the forces in the field.

The total population of the United States in 1861 was about
thirty-one and a half millions. Of this total twenty-two and a
half belonged to the North and nine to the South. The grand total
odds were therefore five against two. The odds against the South
rise to four against one if the blacks are left out. There were
twenty-two million whites in the North against five and a half in
the South. But to reach the real fighting odds of three to one we
must also eliminate the peace parties, large in the North, small
in the South. If we take a tenth off the Southern whites and a
third off the Northern grand total we shall get the approximate
war-party odds of three to one; for these subtractions leave