They were "rough" to say the least....Yankee occupying troops from officers, down to the rank and file were caught-up in so much grift and drunkenness they were mostly ineffective.
Even their "hold" on towns was tenuous at best. Lots of black troops were used and many were beaten/killed if they left the confines of the towns with little if any repercussions.
The substandard white officers did not care about them and due to poor rations and lack of pay (that money was stolen too) desertion was rife as they sought jobs in the countryside. They would just get shed of their uniforms, don civilian clothes that they had stolen and walk away.
It was so bad that they even drank/gambled away monies slated for the disinterment and reinterment of dead Yankees across the many Virginia battlefields. What was not drank/gambled away was simply stolen by the officers.
For every national cemetery in a Southern State you see with dead Yankees in them you can bet that at least 4X as many were never recovered....And that is a conservative estimate.
In Virginia farmers were to be paid $10.00 a head for remains found on their lands and returned to the Yankees but since the grifted the money away farmers just started piling the remains/equipment along rock walls, fences, and such of their farm fields.
When metal detecting in Virginia you learn real quick to hunt along rock fences where there was any fighting. I've found a bunch of stuff (mostly Yankee) like that.
