By all accounts the Confederate Army was a fearsome fighting force. Shoeless and dressed in rags, Confederate soldiers fell upon the Union dead after battle like so many ghouls stripping them of anything of value. Under Lee the army conducted numerous raids into the loyal states looting and pillaging like so many locusts.

Usually the poor state of the confederate soldier has been attributed to his distance from the South and the general problems of resupply. It seems, however, more likely that the natural state of the Confederate soldier was to be shoeless, underfed and dressed in rags. The army was drafted mainly from the poorest whites in society, small farmers who owned no slaves and little or no land.

These were people whom the confederate aristocracy saw no point in provisioning well, people whose first pair of real shoes might easily come from the feet of a dead Yankee.

While some well to do slave owners participated in the Civil War, as officers, many more were exempt from the draft so that they could stay home and manage their plantations. These plantations were most often managed along free market principles so as to produce the most profit. In general this meant that the blockaded South produced far too much cotton. This might be exported to Europe for high profits if the blockade runners got through. The proceeds could be deposited in Europe or used to buy luxury goods to be sent in by other blockade runners.

In the meantime the families of the rank and file soldiers starved in silence - except for a few bread riots towards the end of the war.

The Confederacy subsisted on the glory of its military victories and its conviction of the supremacy of the white race.

It reminds me of the crowds at a McCain/Palin rally.