Confederate Troops

YOUNG SOUTHERNERS AT RICHMOND MAKING LIGHT OF WAR

Skylarking before the lens of the Confederate photographer, we see the Boys in Gray just before Bull Run had taught them the meaning of a battle and elated them with the conviction of their own prowess. The young and confident troops on both sides approached this first severe lesson of the war in the same jocular spirit. There is not a serious face in the picture. The man flourishing the sword bayonet and the one with the drawn dagger are marking with mock heroics their bravado toward the coming struggle, while the one with the musket stands debonair as a comic-opera soldier. The pipe-clay cross bell and breast plate, the cock plumes in the "shapo" of the officer, indicate that the group is of a uniformed military organization already in existence at the beginning of the war. There was no such paraphernalia in the outfit of Southern troops organized later, when simplicity was the order of the day in camp.