Cuz - Thanks for the reply and information. Thats about the states I thought. I thought I was a good history student but what they taught wasn't what I have since learned as the truth.

My geat-grandfather and his son that enlisted together were sharecroppers, his will listed his worth as $150.00 and most of that was his horse and cow. No land, he could not read and write, I refer to him as little more than a white slave to the landowner he sharecropped for. He took his own horse to the 7th AL. Cal. They were to pay him 40 cents a day for it, never did. Squirel, rabbits and deer made up most of his meat. He had to shoot good or go hungry. I suspect midwest farm boys put a lot of meat on the table the same way.

About Generalship, at the beginning, the south took the best with them. But the Northern Generals were fast learners from on the job training.

The south in my own personal opinion was doomed from the start. Lack of manpower and resources. A great-grandfather who was an editor of a newspaper before the war, wrote his wife that the souths only chance was to "gain a decided victory at some point it would secur beyond doubt the election of a Peace man as President and thus close the war." I think when he wrote that "Sept.17/64" he saw the handwriting on the wall. He later fought in one of the last battles of the war. He was amoung about 3000 facing a force of about 32,000. He was a Major of a Company of boys whos average age was about 17 1/2. The south was out of manpower.