The Photographic History of The Civil War: in ten volumes, Thousands of Scenes Photographed 1861-65, with Text by many Special Authorities, Volume 8: Soldier Life and Secret Service.
Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ed.

[112] were registered from the Southern States, enlisted in the Confederate army. This army thus represented the whole Southern people. It was a self-levy en masse of the male population in all save certain mountain regions in Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia.

One gets a perhaps new and surprising conception of the character of the rank and file of the Southern army in such incidents as the following: Here are mock trials going on in the moot-court of a certain artillery company, and the discussions are pronounced by a competent authority ‘brilliant and powerful.’ Here is a group of privates in a Maryland infantry regiment in winter-quarter huts near Fairfax, Virginia; and among the subjects discussed are the following: Vattel and Philmore on international law; Humboldt's works and travels; the African explorations of Barth; the influence of climate on the human features; the culture of cotton; the laws relating to property. Here are some Virginia privates in a howitzer company solemnly officiating at the burial of a tame crow; and the exercises include an English speech, a Latin oration, and a Greek ode!

These Confederate armies must present to the historian who accepts the common view that the South was fighting for the perpetuation of the institution of slavery a difficult—in fact, an insoluble—problem. How could such a motive explain the solidarity of the diverse elements that made up those armies? The Southern planter might fight for his slaves; but why the poor white man, who had none? How could slavery generate such devotion, such patient endurance, such splendid heroism, such unconquerable tenacity through four long years of painfully unequal struggle? The world acknowledges the superb valor of the men who fought under the Southern Cross—and the no less superb devotion of the whole people to the cause of the Confederacy.

Colonel Theodore Roosevelt has written, ‘The world has never seen better soldiers than those who followed Lee.’