The one thing about reenacting is that it will give you a different perspective of things than mearly researching records. It give you lesson in lifestyle of the period and also necessities. No matter how "authentic" you are these is not a single reenactor that I know who will say that they are as tough as the southern soldiers were.

Yes, shoes were a luxury to most of the backwoods boys. You did not wear them everyday on the farms, because they were expensive and hard to find if you did not live in a settlement or town. We read of the many Hardships of the soldiers, shoes of the time were not especially well made and easily tore up. I don't believe that they wore them ever day while in the camps if they did not have to in order to save them for the Campaign. In campaigns and on the march shoes and clothes torn up and became ragged. During the campaigns, supplies did not catch up to the fighting troops most of the time to replace that which wore out

True the southern supply system was not the best in the world. But while in the more stable camps in winter the supplies situations were more favorable. My Grandfather would tell the story of his father saying he had left "many a bloody footprint in the snow". In doing research on him I found what he was talking about was with Longstreet's Corp as it retreated from Knoxville in January and February of 1864 around Strawberry Plains, Tennessee. during that time the roads froze so hard that the edges of the ruts would cut the feet of the men and animals. And that the road would be pink for miles from the bleeding of these cuts. But they were on the march away from their normal supply bases. It was something that stuck in his mind as being extraordinary.