ederal soldiers were abundant and
good,--so abundant and so good that they supplied _both_ armies, and
were greatly preferred by Confederate officers. The equipment of the
Federal armies was well-nigh perfect. The facilities for manufacture
were simply unlimited, and the nation thought no expenditure of treasure
too great, if only the country, the _Union_! could be saved. The factory
and the foundry chimneys made a pillar of smoke by day and of fire by
night. The latest improvements were hurried to the front, and adopted by
both armies almost simultaneously; for hardly had the Federal bought,
when the Confederate captured, and used, the _very latest_.

Commissary stores were piled up all over Virginia, for the use of the
invading armies. They had more than they could protect, and their loss
was gain to the hungry defenders of the soil.

The Confederate soldier fought a host of ills occasioned by the
deprivation of chloroform and morphia, which were excluded from the
Confederacy, by the blockade, as contraband of war. The man who has
submitted to amputation without chloroform, or tossed on a couch of
agony for a night and a day without sleep for the want of a dose of
morphia, may possibly be able to estimate the advantages which resulted
from the possession by the Federal surgeons of an unlimited supply of
these.

The Confederate soldier fought bounties and regular monthly pay; the
"Stars and Stripes," the "Star Spangled Banner," "Hail Columbia,"
"Tramp, Tramp, Tramp," "John Brown's Body," "Rally round the Flag," and
all the fury and fanaticism which skilled minds could create,--opposing
this grand array with the modest and homely refrain of "Dixie,"
supported by a mild solution of "Maryland, My Maryland." He fought good
wagons, fat horses, and tons of quartermaster's stores; pontoon trains,
of splendid material and construction, by the mile; gunboats, wooden and
iron, and men-of-war; illustrated papers, to cheer the "Boys in Blue"
with sketches of the glorious deeds they did not do; Bibles by the car
load, and tracts by the million,--the first to prepare them for death,
and the second to urge upon them the duty of dying.

The Confederate soldier fought the "Sanitary Commission," whose members,
armed with every facility and convenience, quickly carried the sick and
wounded of the Federal army to comfortable quarters, removed the bloody
garments, laid the sufferer on a clean and dry couch, clothed him in
clean things,