agreed. Looking at the rebs in the Picketts charge scene from the movie Gettysburg; lot of them do not fit the lean mean fighting machine image of real Confederate soldiers. Of course there were some stout folks during the war. Generals Rufus Ingals and George H. Thomas come to mind.
To be fair, one would have to slim down like Val Kilmer did for his role as Doc Holiday to look the part.
One reason why Lee went north was the failure of the insurrection commissary. Grant’s campaign in Tennessee deprived the insurrection of pork, a major source of protein. In response to that, the insurrection authorities directed that poultry be grown locally. That opened the south up to deep penetration raids like Grierson, Grant’s flanking of Vicksburg and attack on Jackson, MS, and Sherman’s march to the sea.
Lee’s men were slowly starving. It would be tough to demand that of modern re-enactors.