Eventual Union superiority can make the opening western campaigns look more one-sided than they were. Several slave states maintained trained and disciplined state guards, giving the Confederacy bodies of troops that resembled small standing armies at the war's outset. Those formations also supported the armed enforcement required by a society with a large enslaved population. Veterans of the recent Mexican-American War supplied a pool of officers and soldiers with military experience.
Notable Point · 19:15-21:09
State guards gave the Confederacy early military readiness
Early Union success was not automatic because southern state guards brought training and discipline while recent-war veterans supplied military experience.