Hooker had an army of 180,000 men, to Lee's less than 60,000--about three men to one. He had 400 pieces of artillery to Lee's 170, and both his guns and his ammunition were superior to Lee's. He had unsurpassed quartermaster and commissary departments, a matter in which Lee was wofully deficient. The railroads in Hooker's rear were in excellent condition, while those upon which his adversary must depend were well-nigh hopeless wrecks, with nearly helpless engines and a lamentable insufficiency of cars. Still further, the Northern army was filled with skilled mechanicians and practical engineers capable of quickly meeting and overcoming any mechanical difficulty that might arise. In one case early in the war it is related that an engine in Federal service ran off the track and was badly damaged, thus threatening serious embarrassment to a military movement. When the question arose as to what could be done with the crippled engine, a private stepped from the ranks, saluted respectfully, and said: "I built that engine. I guess I can repair her." The South had next to none of this sort of resource. Nor had it anywhere great shops capable of producing machinery. The South had been an almost exclusively agricultural country, in which the mechanic arts were scarcely at all developed. With such advantages and others of scarcely less importance, it seemed a not very difficult task for Hooker so to employ the 180,000 hardened veterans of the Army of the Potomac as to overcome the resistance of the 58,100 composing the Army of Northern Virginia. The Government at Washington expected nothing less than this. The people of the North demanded such results as their right. The army itself stood eagerly ready to do the work required, for the Army of the Potomac believed in Hooker as it had not previously believed in any of its commanders except McClellan before that general's career was clouded by defeat. The men had seen Hooker fight. They were in love with his rough and ready ways. They repeated around their camp fires his witty sayings, and mightily rejoiced in them. They had indeed none of that filial reverence for him which the men of the Army of Northern Virginia felt for Lee--whom they affectionately called "Mas' Bob." But they had for Hooker an almost boyish enthusiasm which was without doubt an important element of strength. Hooker began right. He was a master of the art of military organization, and he quickly brought the army under his command into a state of positively wonderful efficiency. Then he planned a brilliant campaign--a campaign far better conceived than any that Lee had yet been called upon to meet. Fully recognizing his own superiority in numbers, in guns, in equipment, in supplies, in the materials of war and in that mobility which such superiority necessarily gives, he planned to utilize all these advantages for the certain and quick destruction of his adversary.