The overwhelming majority of Union troops were volunteer troops, just like the Confederates, and were more alike than otherwise. BUT, the federal troops had particular advantages, not just materially and numerically, but in the application of discipline akin if not as stringent, as the regular army.
Gen. John A. Logan of the USA, noted of the United States volunteers:
In contrast, General D.H. Hill, in his popular speech to Confederate veterans post-war noted the lack of such discipline and its effects among the Confederates in the long run:
General Henry T. Douglas, US Army (who as a young man was a Confederate staff officer for Generals Magruder, A.P. Hill, and as a principal engineer at Richmond and in the Trans-Miss. Dept.), noted to his confederate comrades in the "Confederate Veteran" magazine:
Col. Robert Tansill, CSA, among others, commented that the mode of organization of the Confederate Army aside, the "reorganization" of 1862, suppressed anything like a regular discipline in the Confederate service at the company level, and to its detriment in the long term:
This lack of "machine soldier" shoulder-to-shoulder discipline among the Confederate troops was not necessarily an accident.
At Chancellorsville, Walter H. Taylor of Lee's staff was impressed by the individuality of the Confderates in action, as opposed to the regular or "machine soldier:"
General Hooker, who was defeated at Chancellorsville, later told the Congressional committee that what is described above was to him a form of "discipline" in battle, even if not that of the regular or machine-soldier:
In 1861, Mary Chesnut recorded a discussion with President Davis, commander-in-chief of the Confederate army, in which he explained his view that the Confederate army would need to foster other attributes than simple military discipline to breast the odds arrayed against them:
A young Maryland lad recalled of the two armies marching through his town before the battle of Sharpsburg, of the Confederates:
A Union prisoner described the troops of Hood's Army of Tennessee in late 1864:
"In the line distinction as to apparel, between the officers and the men, was nearly obliterated.
Regimental discipline seemed loose, and privates
appeared to comment upon the commands of their immediate officers with an unction and broadness of diction which was always been native to the taste and instinct of the highly polished, intelligent, and asthetick lower orders of the South, surnamed the sunny..."
As regards treatment of civilians, anecdotally, my second great grandfather, a veteran of Jeb Stuart's cavalry, and Fauquier Country, VA resident, informed his youngest son (who passed away in 1993) that both northern and southern soldiers in northern Virginia were equally troublesome to the country people and their horses, stock, and foodstuffs; officially and unofficially. And deserters and bandits of both armies were downright dangerous.
Ebeneezer Ball of Leesburg, VA, mentions something on the same line:
While federal troops might destroy crops or confiscate them, the Confederates could do the same. Late in the war the Confederates, in a failed attempt to reduce the necessity of direct confiscations by the army, established the the tax-in-kind, or "tithing" laws for farm goods late in the war:
There were many official complaints of this tax and the manner of collecting the farm goods, etc., particularly at the county level:
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