Thousands of letters and diary pages were devoted to the camp life of a soldier. This was especially the case at the onset of the Civil War, when going off to war was considered an exciting adventure. Traveling around the country was a rare experience for the majority of young men, some leaving their homes for the first time in their lives. Often, the initial pages of a soldier's diary or journal are filled with humorous stories about new friendships and events that happened off the battlefield. But then, as the war drags on and men are exposed to death and hardships, a visible loss of innocence is revealed in their written words. Hardened by the realities of war, camp life loses its luster and boredom begins to strike its victims. But oh how glorious and fine it was in the beginning.

Although the accommodations varied from camp to camp, a soldier's 'home away from home' was a popular topic in letters home. Captain Charles Wills, of the 103rd Illinois, wrote from camp at Bird's Point, Missouri on December 29, 1861:

"We are at last established in our quarters and thoroughly 'fixed-up' with all the modern improvements in the housekeeping line, coupled with the luxuries of the ancients and the gorgeous splendor and voluptuousness of the middle ages. We have a chimney whose base is rock, the age of which man cannot tell, whose towering top is constructed of costly pecan wood boughs embalmed in soft Missouri mud cement. We have a roof and floors, beds and a door of material carved or sawed from lofty pines of Superior's rock-bound shores. We have tables and chairs and shelves without number and mantle pieces, and, crowning glories, we have good big straw sacks, a bootjack and dutch oven. Government has also furnished a stove for each mess of 15 in our regiment, so we have nothing more to ask for; not a thing. This is just no soldiering at all. It's hard, but it's true that we can't find a thing to pick trouble out of."

Captain Francis Donaldson, of the 71st Pennsylvania Volunteers, also bragged of his accommodations in camp, writing:

"Our tent is a marvel of neatness and comfort and was made so by dint of hard work and the practical experience gained in former campaigns. Sergeant Stiles was the architect and straw the material used. By a complete system of organized raids upon neighboring farms, we borrowed (some would call it stealing) a dozen 'battons' of straw, which, after being matted together, were spread along the sides and floor. We also made a door of straw, well bound together and fasted by straps, in an ingenious manner, to the front pole.... Over the top we fastened our oil cloth blankets, are now able to bid defiance to the rude blasts of 'old Boreas'."

Donaldson also describes the construction of their oven as: "...getting up a lot of the most superior mortar ever seen on Mason & Dixon's line. It consisted of well mixed soft mud."

However, not all soldiers were as lucky as Captain Donaldson and Captain Wills, as is evidenced by the memories of Private Philip D. Stephenson, of the 13th Arkansas Volunteer Infantry, who wrote the following observations about camp life from Columbus, Kentucky, following the battle of Belmont in November of 1861:

"Soon after Belmont we settled down into winter quarters on top of the high bluffs back of Columbus, then came the monotony and yet intensely interesting novelty of camp life...Our winter quarters were rather crude. Most of our men remained in their tent, contenting themselves with throwing a bank of dirt up high around the edges, with a gutter outside to carry the rain off. Hammet and I were fortunate. We managed to get hold of a little board shed and had it removed to the line of the staff officers' quarters. We utilized our tent, making our quarters half-tent, half-shed...The daily routine of that first winter was dull. There was not the discipline which ought to have been, the drilling, sham battles, grand parades and fortifying. Consequently, demoralization ensued. One regiment held an open meeting about something or other, and trouble broke out. Perhaps it was because it was my first experience, or because I was with an Irish company, but it seemed to me, as I look back, that camp at Columbus, the first winter of the war, was the most wicked, drunken and disorderly of my whole army experience."

It appears the Northern soldier fared better than his Southern counterpart, unless they were particularly ingenious or lucky, when it came to his living quarters. And the same held true with the officer versus the private soldier in either army. While not ensconced in such a grand manner as Wills and Donaldson, Lieutenant J.R. Boyle, of the 12th South Carolina Volunteers, certainly thought his home worthy of note, commenting:

"Our tents, bunks or whatever they could be called, were made with the poles or split timber, about 12 feet long, leaned against a ridge pole in a slanting position, and covered like old time potato stacks with leaves and dirt, having a chimney at one end, the funnel being empty barrels; they were quite warm and four or five men slept, cooked and ate in each."

When the soldiers were not preoccupied with building the quarters, camp routines was much the same in both armies. Drilling, reviews and work details were pretty much the standard order of the day. However, men often found some inventive ways to entertain themselves to fight the monotony of camp life when an army halted for any period of time.

Following the battle of Stones River, Stephenson wrote of the pleasant routine of camp life, stating:

"The camp was in a beautiful grove, some two miles or so east of Wartrace. I found everybody well and in high spirits, enjoying leisure and their pleasant surroundings. "Some of the pleasant memories of the war are around that camp at Wartrace, and some of the fullest. We were there until the latter part of June, and camp life settled down into easy routine work and story telling and visiting in the neighborhood, and Grand Reviews." But in later pages, also mentioned another activity which appeared to be wide spread among both armies, "Camp dissipations! Three illustrations live in my memory. The first, our Irish afforded me. Some of them were drunk on every possible occasion, and would beat each other into jelly and would swill whiskey to insensibility. Their endurance was marvelous. How they escaped killing each other or being killed is a mystery."

While Captain Wills made mention of enjoyable ways to pass the time, writing, "Fishing is a principal amusement or time-killer now. I have fished about four days and caught nary a 'minner'" -- he also felt the need to mention another unsuitable way to fight boredom by writing:

"We have had some fighting in camp lately. An artillery man stabbed one of the 9th and got knocked, kicked and bayoneted for it. The artillery have sworn to have revenge and every hickory man (the 9th have a fatigue suit of hickory) they see they pounce onto. They have a skirmish every day."

Being in the cavalry afforded more mobility than being an infantryman, but also added the additional daily chores of caring for your mount with grooming, feeding and exercising. Captain Wills often pointed out the advantages of this in his diary. Writing from Rienzi, Mississippi, in June of 1862, Wills describes camp life thus:

"We are camped here enjoying ourselves grandly. As our brigade is scattered over a line of 50 miles we just pitch our headquarters in the quietest spot we can find independent of the command..." "In the heat of the day we read and lounge in our tents, and mornings we go to the creek and bathe and then ride a dozen or so miles to keep our horses exercised. Evenings I visit generally some the half-dozen families within a half mile of us of whom I borrow books and in return furnish them with occasional papers. We have splendid water and my health is perfect. This is the healthiest part of the South."

Sidney M. Davis, a member of the 6th U. S. Cavalry, gives more detail on the camp life of a cavalryman, stating:

"Our duties during this period were light but incessant. First, reveille aroused the slumber Raw Recruit, and the roll was called; then followed lessons in sabre-exercies, which gave us an appetite for breakfast; after this meal came a drill in field maneuvers, which materially assisted digestion; then dinner, and after dinner another field drill; and at five o' clock the labors of the day were closed by dress parade. After than, at sunset and nine o' clock, we had, respectively, retreat and tattoo, at which we simply fell in under arms and answered to our names at the roll call."

As the war progressed, and hard marching and fighting turned recruits into seasoned veterans, little was mentioned of drill in camp. Instead, time was spent writing letters home, playing card-games such as; seven-up, poker, euchre, playing chess or checkers, hunting, and foraging for what luxuries could be found. Some units put together bands, while others put together minstrel shows and theater productions. While soldiers often mention spending some of their time attending to sermons of the gospel, others -- like Stephenson, simply wrote, "As for 'chaplains,' we had none. Nor in the brigade either, that I remember."

Still, despite any number of ways to kill time, many a soldier suffered from homesickness. Private Stephenson astutely noticed how the first year so affected many of his comrades by writing:

"...hundreds, perhaps thousands died the first year of the war of home-sickness. It was so, especially at Corinth. Brave fellows who had faced the deadly sheets of musketry at Shiloh but a little while ago, now pined away and died in their tents. Half sick everybody was, but that does not explain these deaths. The malady was recognized and distinctly defined as home-sickness. Three things about it are worth noticing; first, it was confined almost entirely to the first year of the war; second, it was not traceable to physical condition; third, it was peculiar to country boys and men as contra-distinguished from those of the cities or towns."

Although lengthy stays in one particular camp became fewer as the war ground on, due to winter campaigning, even short halts proved to be more detrimental on a soldier's health. This was especially true if the place of encampment was poorly chosen or where the men were exposed to the added suffering of inclement weather. If an army was demoralized or in a state of half-starvation, the gloom of incessant raining and knee-deep mud made it twice unbearable. Despite the fact that the Army of Tennessee had claimed victory on the battlefield of Chickamauga, Stephenson could not help but to complain over their campsite and the army's plight:

"When I got back from Alabama the army was before Chattanooga. Not all the troops were on the heights around the place, however. I found our camp in the Chickamauga "bottom," some miles back of Missionary Ridge. Such a bottom it was, a quagmire for miles. Many of Bragg's troops were camped in the bottom, probably to be near water. We were always crossing Chickamauga River, the crookedest stream in the world. "The autumn rains were falling [a miserably wet season it proved to be] and the whole of this vast bottom land became a dense, marshy jungle, loblolly of mud!

The railroad ran through there with a score of bridges, but our army came near being cut off from its supplies on account of this lake of mud in its rear. Corduroy roads were built for miles, yet every rain would undo all our work and make it worse than before. I saw in the middle of the read, at one particularly bad place, a pole sticking up out of the mud, on the top of which was a head board with these words--"Mule drowned here." A mule had actually gone our of sight, sunk in the mud! Winter quarters were not allowed to be built and therefore we had no shelter. Starvation stared us in the face. For weeks at a time we subsisted on two meals a day and those meals were a small pone of corn bread and a cup of corn coffee. Sickness, for the first time since our stay around Corinth, broke out among the ranks and many were swept away...I do not remember a period of time when the army was inert than at this time."

By late 1864, the Southern army was poorly clad and fed. Rather than writing about camp life, many of their letters and diary entries now reflected this sad state of affairs, along with hopeful references to returning home and the end of the war. While the Union continued to rack up victories on the battlefield, keeping their morale high, Stephenson indulged himself in a little self-pity in November of 1864, when he wrote:

"We were camped without regard to order, comfort , or discipline -- all jumbled up. Why, I know not, except that it was in keeping with the reckless indifference in officers and men. Gross carelessness and laxity on the part of even general officers were discernible. Thrown together, more like a great mob, than an army, dejected, neglected, half fed, half clad, without tents, and many without blankets, how could this two week's 'rest' benefit us very much? In addition, down came the furious winter rains giving early tokens of severity. The men were in that state which vents itself in endless bickering and abuse. The authority of officers became a theme for contemptuous feeling and remarks.

Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective November Issue: Population Bomb? The Debate over Indian Population eHistory Book Reviews November Review: 428 AD: An Ordinary Year at the End of the Roman Empire MultiMedia Histories Featured History: Coal Mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
		THESE ARE ARCHIVED PAGES OF THE OLD EHISTORY SITE click here for the NEW eHistory site These pages are not actively maintained and may have errors in content and functionality

eHistory  >  American Civil War	Search

EHISTORY.COM: U.S. CIVIL WAR: "A Nation Divided": June 2000 Issue:

[BACK]