From –
DETAILED MINUTIAE OF SOLDIER LIFE
IN THE ARMY OF NORTHERN VIRGINIA
1861-1865-
By CARLTON MCCARTHY
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.
Well stated [><]
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