Grant's army was the flower of Northern manhood and with its three hundred and eighteen great field guns the best equipped body of fighting men ever brought together on our continent. His baggage train was over sixty miles long and would have stretched the entire distance to Richmond.
By the spring of 1864 when he reached the Rapidan Lee's army had been recruited again to its normal strength of sixty-two thousand.
A great religious revival swept the Southern camps during the winter and its meetings lasted into the spring almost to the hour of the opening guns of the Wilderness campaign. Had whispers from the Infinite reached the souls of the ragged men in grey and told them of coming Gethsemane and Calvary?
Certain it is that though Lee's army were ragged and poorly fed their courage was never higher, their faith in their Commander never more sublime than in those beautiful spring mornings in April when they burnished their bayonets to receive Grant's overwhelming host.
The Chaplain of Ned Vaughan's regiment was leading a prayer meeting in the moonlight. An earnest brother was praying fervently for more manhood, and more courage.
A ragged Confederate kneeling nearby didn't like the drift of his petition and his patience gave out. He raised his head and called.
"Say, hold on there, brother! You're getting that prayer all wrong. We don't need no more courage—got so much now we're skeered of ourselves sometimes. What we need is provisions. Ask the Lord to send us something to eat. That's what we want now——"
The leader took the interruption in good spirit and added an eloquent request for at least one good meal a day if the Lord in his goodness and mercy could spare it.
No persimmon tree was ever stripped without the repetition of their old joke. They all knew the words by heart,
"Don't eat those persimmons—they're not good for you!"