"Mr.
Commissary Banks," his successor Pope, and McClellan himself, had
furnished their enemies with the material of war, with tents,
medicines, ambulances, and ammunition waggons. Even the vehicles at
Confederate headquarters bore on their tilts the initials U.S.A.;
many of Lee's soldiers were partially clothed in Federal uniforms,
and the bad quality of the boots supplied by the Northern contractors
was a very general subject of complaint in the Southern ranks. Nor
while the men were fighting were the women idle. The output of the
Government factories was supplemented by private enterprise.
Thousands of spinning-wheels, long silent in dusty lumber-rooms,
hummed busily in mansion and in farm; matrons and maids, from the
wife and daughters of the Commander-in-Chief to the mother of the
drummer-boy, became weavers and seamstresses; and in every household
of the Confederacy, although many of the necessities of life--salt,
coffee and sugar--had become expensive luxuries, the needs of the
army came before all else.
But notwithstanding the energy of the Government and the patriotism
of the women, the troops lacked everything but spirit. Nor, even with
more ample resources, could their wants have been readily supplied.
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