among strangers for whom they cared not, and who cared
not for them, became dull and listless, lost their courage, and were
slowly but surely "demoralized." They did, it is true, in many cases,
stand up to the last, but they did it on dry principle, having none of
that enthusiasm and delight in duty which once characterized them.

The Confederate soldier was peculiar in that he was ever ready to fight,
but never ready to submit to the routine duty and discipline of the camp
or the march. The soldiers were determined to be soldiers after their
own notions, and do their duty, for the love of it, as they thought
best. The officers saw the necessity for doing otherwise, and so the
conflict was commenced and maintained to the end.

It is doubtful whether the Southern soldier would have submitted to any
hardships which were purely the result of discipline, and, on the other
hand, no amount of hardship, clearly of necessity, could cool his ardor.
And in spite of all this antagonism between the officers and men, the
presence of conscripts, the consolidation of commands, and many other
discouraging facts, the privates in the ranks so conducted themselves
that the historians of the North were forced to call them the finest
body of infantry ever assembled.

But to know the men, we must see them divested of all their false
notions of soldier life, and enduring the incomparable hardships which
marked the latter half of the war.

CHAPTER IV.

ON THE MARCH.

It is a common mistake of those who write on subjects familiar to
themselves, to omit the details, which, to one not so conversant with
the matters discussed, are necessary to a clear appreciation of the
meaning of the writer. This mistake is fatal when the writer lives and
writes in one age and his readers live in another. And so a soldier,
writing for the information of the citizen, should forget his own
familiarity with the every-day scenes of soldier life and strive to
record even those things which seem to him too common to mention.

Who does not know all about the marching of soldiers? Those who have
never marched with them and some who have. The varied experience of
thousands would not tell the whole story of the march. Every man must be
heard before the story is told, and even then the part of those who fell
by the way is wanting.

Orders to move! Where? when? what for?--are the eager questions of the
men as they begin their preparations to march. Generall