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Fundamentally, there was very little difference in organization, equipment, training, or tactical doctrine. Initially, both armies were composed of volunteers, with substantial portions of their officer corps coming from the professional officer corps of the pre-war Regular Army.

Over time, the Union army used more and more drafted soldiers, while the Confederate one remained effectively all-volunteer. Additionally, the Union army benefited from having access (in small numbers) to advanced rifles, like the Sharps and Henry repeating rifles. However, there was no significant difference in overall technology between the two sides, and weapons were either identical, or comparable.

As the war dragged on, the Confederate armies began to suffer from significant shortages of supplies - they had difficulty obtaining enough arms, ammunition, clothes, and food, so they generally were of poorer quality than those of the Union. Confederate forces were thus often ill-fed, poorly-clothed, and with fewer weapons than their Union opponents.

The Confederate armies usually had better morale than the Union ones, mostly due to poorer leadership amongst the Union side.

All of these things didn't matter too much - the Civil War was generally fought between two sides with armies that were mostly identical in composition. The Union won for a simple reason: they could heavily out-produce the Confederacy, replacing both lost soldiers and equipment that the Confederacy couldn't. Once the Union produced leadership that recognized this fact, the Union strategy was simply to overwhelm the Confederates - disregard casualties and losses, since while a lost soldier to the Confederate armies was one that would never be replaced, a similar loss to the Union armies was one that would be quickly replaced.

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15y ago

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