I just finished reading your book “Rebel” and think I can shed some light on why the Union Army was so inept and poorly armed at the beginning of the Civil War. While researching my mother’s Curtis family from Philadelphia, I found a copy of a letter in the Philadelphia PA archives from the head of the Philadelphia Armory to Abraham Lincoln advising him that when he mobilized the Pennsylvania  Minutemen and ordered them to go to Baltimore at the beginning of the war, they had to report for duty with their own 0ersonal weapons and whatever ammunition they would find because the (Traitorous Bastard) Secretary of War in the previous administration had ordered the contents of the Philadelphia Armory sent to Louisiana and then sold to the Governor of Louisiana. That Sec. of War was no other than Jefferson Davis. It stands to reason that if Jeff Davis sold the contents of the Philadelphia Armory to a Southern state he did the same with the contents of all the other armories in the North. This would explain why the North suffered greater casualties and lost so many battles at the beginning of the war, which Lincoln and history falsely  blamed on inept Northern Generals. The only reason I can think of why this is not mentioned in our history books is because it would be next to impossible to keep Abe Lincoln up there on a pedestal, along side Jesus, if it were known that he was dumb enough to send his army into battle without arms and ammunition,

By the way…I enjoyed reading your book.

Marilyn Ayers