bservers, his comments
were always to the point. He had studied his profession in a
practical school. The more delicate moves of the great game were
topics of absorbing interest. He cast a comprehensive glance over the
whole theatre; he would puzzle out the reasons for forced marches and
sudden changes of direction; his curiosity was great, but
intelligent, and the groups round the camp-fires often forecast with
surprising accuracy the manoeuvres that the generals were planning.
But far more often the subjects of conversation were of a more
immediate and personal character. The capacity of the company cook,
the quality of the last consignment of boots, the merits of different
bivouacs, the prospect of the supply train coming up to time, the
temper of the captain and subaltern--such were the topics which the
Confederate privates spent their leisure in discussing. They had long
since discovered that war is never romantic and seldom exciting, but
a monotonous round of tiresome duties, enlivened at rare intervals by
dangerous episodes. They had become familiar with its constant
accompaniment of privations--bad weather, wet bivouacs, and wretched
roads, wood that would not kindle, and rations that did not satisfy.
They had learned that a soldier's worst enemy may be his native soil,
in the form of dust or mud; that it is possible to march for months
without firing a shot or seeing a foe; that a battle is an interlude
which breaks in at rare intervals on the long round of digging,
marching, bridge-building, and road-making; and that the time of the
fiercest fire-eater is generally occupied in escorting mule-trains,
in mounting guard, in dragging waggons through the mud, and in
loading or unloading stores. Volunteering for perilous and onerous
duties, for which hundreds had eagerly offered themselves in the
early days, ere the glamour of the soldier's life had vanished, had
ceased to be popular. The men were now content to wait for orders;
and as discipline crystallised into habit, they became resigned to
the fact that they were no longer volunteers, masters of their own
actions, but the paid servants of the State, compelled to obey and
powerless to protest.

To all outward appearance, then, in the spring of 1863 the Army of
Northern Virginia bore an exceedingly close resemblance to an army of
professional soldiers. It is true that military etiquette was not
insisted on; that more license, both in quarters and on the march,