The Daily Dispatch: September 17, 1862., [Electronic resource]

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Ragged and barefooted.

The Yankee correspondents of the Northern press make a ingubrious attempt to be funny over the ragged and barefooted condition of the Confederate soldiery. This is a poor consolation for the whippings they have received from ‘"ragged and barefooted"’ men. The value of soldiers does not consist in fine clothes, but in the capacity to win battles. The men, and not the toggery, is the article that decides the issues of war. The Yankee historians of the first Revolution have always made the ‘"ragged and barefooted"’ condition of the heroes of '76 a matter of pride and exultation. The British soldiery used to laugh, just as the Yankees, do now, at the county wardrobe and bare feet of the rebels, but let him laugh who wins. The day will come when the men who have won the great battles of this war will occupy a page in history glorious as that of the heroes of '76, and their deeds will shine all the brighter from the poverty and distress amidst which they heroically and successfully straggled to conquer a gigantic and intolerable despotism.