if the troops had not been supplied from other sources they
could hardly have marched at all. The captures made in the Valley, in
the Peninsula, and in the Second Manassas campaign proved of
inestimable value. Old muskets were exchanged for new, smooth-bore
cannon for rifled guns, tattered blankets for good overcoats. "Mr.
Commissary Banks," his successor Pope, and McClellan himself, had
furnished their enemies with the material of war, with tents,
medicines, ambulances, and ammunition waggons. Even the vehicles at
Confederate headquarters bore on their tilts the initials U.S.A.;
many of Lee's soldiers were partially clothed in Federal uniforms,
and the bad quality of the boots supplied by the Northern contractors
was a very general subject of complaint in the Southern ranks. Nor
while the men were fighting were the women idle. The output of the
Government factories was supplemented by private enterprise.
Thousands of spinning-wheels, long silent in dusty lumber-rooms,
hummed busily in mansion and in farm; matrons and maids, from the
wife and daughters of the Commander-in-Chief to the mother of the
drummer-boy, became weavers and seamstresses; and in every household
of the Confederacy, although many of the necessities of life--salt,
coffee and sugar--had become expensive luxuries, the needs of the
army came before all else.

But notwithstanding the energy of the Government and the patriotism
of the women, the troops lacked everything but spirit. Nor, even with
more ample resources, could their wants have been readily supplied.
In any case this would have involved a long halt in a secure
position, and in a few weeks the Federal strength would be increased
by fresh levies, and the morale of their defeated troops restored.
But even had time been given the Government would have been powerless
to render substantial aid. Contingents of recruits were being drilled
into discipline at Richmond; yet they hardly exceeded 20,000 muskets;
and it was not on the Virginia frontier alone that the South was hard
pressed. The Valley of the Mississippi was beset by great armies;
Alabama was threatened, and Western Tennessee was strongly occupied;
it was already difficult to find a safe passage across the river for
the supplies furnished by the prairies of Texas and Louisiana, and
communication with Arkansas had become uncertain. If the Mississippi
were lost, not only would three of the most fertile States, as
prolific of hardy soldiers a