or is my understanding incorrect?
Now, i know that war is just never as easy or predictable as it should be. The little i've read on the civil war shows that as the north's production ramped up and the south's dried out, that's when the war started to swing the other way.
Were there a significant portion of more experienced generals living in the south? Experienced from what? Veteran soldiers (and veterans of what?)
Did the rhetoric of southern soldiers believing in their cause ACTUALLY result in battlefield gains?
Or was it simply that as far as military minds, fighting men and technology the two forces were more or less equal and the battles just happened to play out that way?
I'm trying to fight the image of the confederate army just being a bunch of yokels shooting guns off in the air and crying the rebel yell, with the north being a refined yankee military. Because that stereotype suggests a good old fashioned steam-rolling, which was not the case.
It really wasn't, even during the early period. In Virginia, the South won a hotly contested battle between amateur armies (Manassas), exploited Union leadership problems to force an unneeded retreat (the Peninsula), and attacked a newly formed Union Army whose subordinate units had never worked together. In the latter battle, Lee (who had taken command midway through the Peninsula campaign) split his army in two, nearly got half of it gobbled up, and won his great victory because the Union army had fixated on the threatened half and ignored the remaining portion of Lee's army. None of these victories altered the strategic balance in the East, they merely bloodied both armies and kept the North out of (much) Southern territory.
Compare this to the Western theater. By summer of 1862, the Union had taken most of Tennessee, parts of north Mississippi, captured New Orleans, seized control of most of the Mississippi, captured a large Confederate garrison at Fort Donelson, and killed the Confederate theater commander (Shiloh).
You can perhaps make the case that the South was a bit more prepared for the war. The scare of John Brown's Raid seems to have led to an increase in militia activity, so that there were more civilians available with basic military training. Beyond that, you get into speculation about cultural differences (egalitarian North vs aristocratic South; industrial vs agrarian; etc).
Macpherson, James B. Battle Cry of Freedom. Foote, Shelby. The Civil War: a Narrative.
This is generally seen as a cliche, but the fact that rural Southerners were more comfortable in use of fire arms in civilian life probably gave them in edge in the early stages of the war. However, by the time Union army was fully mobilized with regular training and drilling, those slight advantages melted away.