That Superior Army
 
From: bernhard1848@att.net
 
Robert L. Dabney informs us that the payment of cash bounties to recruit soldiers cost the Northern people $490 million from May 1863 to April 1865. The end of the war left New York State with a bounty debt of $26 million and the city of Philadelphia alone owed $44 million for mercenaries hired to fight the American South. The Southern soldiers got paid with near worthless money, most often walked barefoot, and existed on parched corn and whatever the enemy left behind after being routed. 
 
Bernhard Thuersam, Director
Cape Fear Historical Institute
www.cfhi.net  
 
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That Superior Army
 
“Our men in the field do not lack food, or clothing, or money, but they do lack noble watchwords and inspiring ideas, such as are worth fighting and dying for. The Southern soldier has what at least serves him as such; for he believes that he fights in defense of country, home, and rights; and he strikes vehemently, and with a will.
 
Our men, alas! have no such ideas. The Union is to most of them an abstraction, and not an inspiring watchword. The sad truth should be known – that our army has no conscious, noble purpose; and our soldiers generally have not much stomach for fight.
 
Look at the opposing armies and you will see two striking truths. First, the Northern men are superior in numbers, virtue, intelligence, bodily strength, and real pluck; and yet on the whole they have been outgeneraled and badly beaten. Second, the Northern army is better equipped, better clad, fed and lodged; and is in a far more comfortable condition, not only than the Southern army, but any other in the world; and yet, if the pay were stopped in both, the Northern army would probably mutiny at once, or crumble rapidly; while the Southern army would probably hold together for a long time, in some shape, if their cause seemed to demand it.
 
The animating spirit of the Southern soldier is rather moral than pecuniary; of the Northern soldier it is rather pecuniary than moral.”
 
(Gen. Samuel Howe, US Army, February 20, 1862, Confederate Veteran Magazine, July, 1930, page 251)