(1) Both North and South needed many months of preparation before they were ready for full-scale war.
(2) For at least the first eighteen months of the war, the Confederacy was able to obtain many supplies from sympathetic nations in Europe. Not until late in 1862 did the Federals have enough ships to blockade effectively the major Southern ports.
(3) Southern armies generally fought on the defensive. It does not require as many men to hold a position as it does to attack and seize that position.
(4) Moreover, every time the Federals captured a city, bridge, road junction, or other important point, men had to be left behind to guard these places. To the Northern armies also went the task of sheltering, feeding, and to some extent training thousands of freed or runaway slaves. Therefore, even though the Federal armies greatly outnumbered the Confederate forces, the North needed more men to fight the war.
(5) In that age armies rarely fought in wintertime, a season of cold weather and deep mud. Most of the military campaigns took place between April and October. Hence, little activity occurred for about half of each year.
Before surveying the military campaigns, the student should bear in mind two more important, but somewhat confusing, points: each side named its armies by different systems, and each side used different methods for identifying battles.
The North named its armies for large rivers, while the South designated its forces by large areas of land. For example, the Federal Army of the Potomac fought against the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia. This difference of names could and did sometimes become perplexing. An illustration of this occurred in the Western theater, where the Federal Army of the Tennessee (river) campaigned against the Confederate Army of Tennessee (state).
Likewise, both sides used different methods in naming battles. The North referred to a battle by the closest stream, river, run, or creek in the area. The South designated a battle by the name of the nearest town. Thus, the bloodiest one-day engagement of the Civil War is known in the North as the battle of Antietam Creek, and in the South as the battle of Sharpsburg, Maryland. In some cases, such as the battles of Gettysburg and Wilson’s Creek, both sides adopted the same name.
Now let us turn to the war itself and “follow the armies.”