The Federal armies seemed to spring from the ground.

Strict discipline had taken the place of the disorder and insubordination that had first prevailed in their ranks.

The armies were splendidly equipped.

They were able to obtain any amount of the finest guns, rifles, and ammunition of war from the workshops of Europe; while the Confederates, cut off from the world, had to rely solely upon the make-shift factories they had set up, and upon the guns and stores they captured from the enemy.
The Northerners had now, as a blow to the power of the South, abolished slavery, and were raising regiments of negroes from among the free blacks of the North, and from the slaves they took from their owners wherever their armies penetrated the Southern States.

Most of the Confederate ports had been either captured or were so strictly blockaded that it was next to impossible for the blockade-runners to get in or out, while the capture of the forts on the Mississippi enabled them to use the Federal flotillas of gunboats to the greatest advantage, and to carry their armies into the center of the Confederacy.
Still, there was no talk whatever of surrender on the part of the South, and, indeed, the decree abolishing slavery, and still more the action of the North in raising black regiments, excited the bitterest feeling of animosity and hatred.