But all that I could think of, in the darkness and the cold,
Was that I was leaving home and my folks were growing old.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
“We put our little ‘dog-tents’ upon the sticky red mud of Virginia; made smoky fires outside, of wet wood... warmed and dried as we could, standing by the wretched fires in the rain; then we spread our blankets on the soft mud, and slept. We slept; for we were tired out; but we awoke stiff, rheumatic, and cross. . . . It has rained about five days of the week.”1 Thus a Connecticut officer summed up camp life near Falmouth. Storm fronts had followed Burnside’s advance toward the Rappahannock, the damn pontoons had not arrived, and the weather was turning cold.
Sleet and snow now occasionally mixed with the rain. “Ice forms half an inch thick at night,” a surgeon in the Sixth Corps claimed. During the most bitter nights corporals of the guard strolled about making sure pickets did not freeze to death, a real danger as winter approached. During daytime thaws the rain, sleet, and snow turned the earth into a quagmire. A member of the 13th New Hampshire wryly remarked, “Virginia weather and mud is responsible for nine tenths of the profanity in the army.”2
Soldiers could adjust to cold weather, but no one got used to wet feet or damp clothes. Not only did it seem to rain most days, but when it snowed, it was that heavy late fall kind of snow that soon soaked through everything. On a typical night sodden blankets covered men who had fallen asleep in wet clothes and then might wake to an inch of water in their tents. One Pennsylvanian informed newspaper readers back home that the soldiers could stand such adversity and even conquer it, but few of his comrades sounded as hopeful. “Muttering” was the most polite word used to describe their response.3
Newer regiments often lacked tents. Men slept near fires or stood up all night with blankets over their heads to avoid waking up in a mud puddle.4 Soldiers with flimsy shelter tents fared little better. High winds or driving rain easily penetrated these poor defenses against the elements. “I never thought... I should see the day when I would regard a Negro cabin as a luxury,” remarked a Mississippi-born Federal artillery officer. Not only did the tents easily flood, but as one strapping six-foot, one-inch recruit lamented, you had to lie down “with both ends stick[ing] out.”5 The men remained in camp limbo, expecting to move (and perhaps fight) at any time but also weighing the wisdom of setting up more permanent living arrangements.
The more industrious soldiers built chimneys, a tricky and hazardous undertaking. Those fortunate enough to have tents pitched on a hillside might simply dig out a convenient fireplace, but makeshifts of sticks daubed with mud and covered with barrels were more common. Officers enjoyed watching such improvement going up, in part because the labor itself seemed to do the men good. More practically, privates relished a snug tent warmed by a small fire on a cold night, but the blessing was hardly unmixed. “We try to imagine... an old-fashioned fireplace at home,” a Massachusetts lieutenant observed, “but the smoke and ashes in our eyes and the cold wind at our backs very quickly dispels the illusion.” Of course the chimneys (and tents) sometimes caught fire.6
Building a chimney was a tedious, time-consuming job. Camp wisdom held that marching orders usually came right after such a project had been completed. By the end of November and the beginning of December, however, many men assumed they would soon be in winter quarters and began to erect sturdier structures. Sounds of saw and axe reverberated through the camps all day.7
Soldiers typically erected huts and covered them with tents; some notched their logs and built pitched roofs, while others dug down a couple of feet and set the timber vertically. Whatever the design, the plentiful Virginia mud filled the chinks. Typically these shelters accommodated between four and eight men. Tenderfoot regiments watched veterans raising “shanties” and quickly followed suit. Quality of construction naturally varied from what a Pennsylvania chaplain termed “neat and tasteful” to “sorry, shabby concerns.”8
Whether they slept out in the open, in tents, or in huts, the men had to work hard simply to get warm. Some companies kept large fires going day and night. Although a few soldiers used coal, most relied on whatever wood they could scrounge nearby, and the supply rapidly thinned out. Chopping wood took time and could be dangerous with poor quality axes. It could also be frustrating. After hauling wood for a half-mile, a Massachusetts infantryman bitingly noted that “some of the boys [who] were never known to bring a stick . . . always wanted the best seat at the fire.”9
In later years men fondly recalled pleasant evenings spent around roaring fires, but at the time their watering, burning eyes received more notice. Green wood produced acrid smoke, and the wind always blew it into their faces. A Maine recruit claimed he could see no more then ten feet in any direction, perhaps a blessing because many of his comrades had taken on a decidedly sooty appearance. Sparks ignited blankets, even boots. Little wonder soldiers ruefully named their bivouacs “Camp Misery” or “Smoky Hollow.”10
The sight of Maine troops in torn pants and underwear drilling on a cold day underscored the fact that some men had completed their recent march in a decidedly threadbare state. Though the Federals looked like parade-ground soldiers compared to the ragged Confederates, a few regiments had gone for two months without a change of clothes.11
The army’s halt along the Rappahannock allowed the baggage trains finally to catch up with the brigades, and quartermasters began issuing overcoats, wool shirts, and underwear. These items brought “comfort and joy” to a Massachusetts recruit but provoked a cynical response from a New Hampshire private. Drawing new clothes likely meant a battle in the offing because the government “want[s] the dead well dressed that are left on the field.”12
By the fall of 1862, however, the word “shoddy” had entered the American lexicon to describe clothing supplied by unscrupulous contractors. With Jacksonian outrage Democratic editors blasted “monopolists” who gouged the taxpayers but cared little for the soldiers’ well-being. Footwear was a case in point. Boots too heavy for marching blistered the feet. They often fit badly, the soles quickly gave out, and bare toes poked into the cold air. Even new shoes usually leaked. Men would write whole paragraphs in letters listing the specifications for shoes or boots they wanted sent from home.13
The war in some respects remained a public-private endeavor with soldiers still relying on packages from home to round out their often spare wardrobes. Soldiers might clumsily sew up or patch old clothes, and the men generally carried what they called a “housewife”—needles, thread, and thimble. Few soldiers mentioned washing clothes. Laundry days were probably rare—a good thing in late November—because drying wet clothes would have been nearly impossible.14
Nor were dirty-looking fellows in warm uniforms eating all that well. “Why did I leave three square meals a day to be a soldier?” was stock camp humor. Thinking about good food only made matters worse. “If you write any more about Turky i shall go cracy,” a Massachusetts volunteer admonished a relative. Soldiers sat around the fires cursing all manner of folks, including their officers, for the skimpy rations. Perhaps the officers were negligent, but sometimes the commissaries shorted the men and lined their own pockets by selling government food to sutlers or other extortioners.15
More likely, however, the transportation had gone awry. Burnside’s supply lines stretched from the Aquia Creek and Belle Plain landings on the Potomac River to camps scattered north and east of the Rappahannock. Before the engineers repaired the rail connection to Falmouth, 800 tons of supplies had to be hauled daily over atrocious roads where wagons easily became stuck or tumbled down embankments. For some soldiers this meant either a long journey along the kidney-jarring roads or backbreaking labor extricating wagons and mules from the mud.16
Consequently, during the first week or so after the march many of Burnside’s men went hungry. Even hardtack sold at a premium, and when boxes finally arrived at the camp of a Pennsylvania regiment, the “boys walked into them like mince pies.” Sometimes the crackers and the salt pork were wormy. One box of such fare, months old, prompted wags to explain that the letters “B.C.” on the side (which actually stood for “Brigade Commissary”) meant “Before Christ.” Yet the famished hardly cared. A broken bottle of cornmeal in the 133rd Pennsylvania presented no problem. The men baked it up into “dodgers... chew[ed] it fine and pick[ed] the pieces of glass out between our teeth.” An apocryphal tale more than likely, but several regiments dubbed their bivouacs “Camp Starvation.”17
The standard Federal ration of a pound of meat and a pound of hard bread, though sufficient in quantity, fell short in variety and nutrition. Commonly enough, ravenous men would wolf down a three-day supply of food in one day and then go hungry.18 Thinking they had fared better with McClellan, soldiers nicknamed broken hardtack soaked in pork fat “Burnside stew.” The amenities of dining were ignored. “When we get home again,” a New Hampshire recruit mused, “we will not any more sit at the table to eat, but will seize our grub in our fists, and eat it on the wood pile, or in the back yard like soldiers.”19
After days of hardtack and salt pork, nearly anything else seemed like sumptuous fare. A Minnesotan pronounced rice and boiled potatoes a “rich dish.” Soft bread, vegetables, pickles, molasses, and plain bean soup elicited appreciative comments.20 Every regiment had specialists in scrounging extra food, foragers who cleaned out local farmers or bolder spirits who pilfered provisions from their own officers. General Sumner lost a fine turkey to some audacious thieves; men who had stolen a skinned rabbit from their company commander brazenly serenaded the camp with a chorus of “Who Stole Captain Trout’s Rabbit?”21
More scrupulous soldiers wangled passes to buy overpriced food in Falmouth, where flour sold for 12½ cents a pound; bread, 25 cents a loaf; a quarter of a beef liver, 25 cents; and a pound of fresh pork, 25 cents. Although dickering likely occurred, enlisted men could scarcely afford anything between visits of the paymaster. “I’ll eat hard bread and salt pork before I’ll pay such enormous prices,” declared a Connecticut officer, “and to ‘secesh’ at that.”22
Such thrift and loyalty were admirable, but growling stomachs hardly cared. Whenever a sutler arrived in camp, hungry soldiers flocked around his wagon and soon parted with their hard-earned cash. Everyone knew the price of goods back home and therefore most viewed sutlers as at best a necessary evil. A sutler charging 50 cents for a pound of butter and $2.00 for a plug of Navy tobacco, a Pennsylvania recruit grumbled, “had fairly embedded himself in greenbacks.” According to the New York Herald, sutlers had paid only 25 cents for that plug of tobacco.23 A discernible strain of anti-Semitism ran through such talk. These traders were nothing but “Jews that have come here to swindle the soldiers,” a New Hampshire volunteer groused. The New York Times reported that Jews had swarmed out of New York and Philadelphia and Baltimore to make outlandish profits selling cheap merchandise.24
Frustrated officers threatened to expel sutlers, but enlisted men took matters into their own hands. Bored, drunk, or simply fed up, soldiers staged midnight “raids,” tearing down tents or tipping over wagons and taking what they wanted. With cries of “let’s go for him, he has got enough of our money,” a large group of soldiers “cleaned out” one sutler and wrapped the miscreant up in his own tent fly.25 These men were playing a risky game. A few such incidents might drive down prices; but if they happened too often or the men got out of control, the provost guards would step in, and the sutlers might disappear altogether.
Soldiers would have been wealthier and probably healthier if sutlers had been banished from the camps. Words such as “unpalatable,” “unspeakable,” or “indigestible” accurately described their pies and other baked goods.26 Besides being cheated, the men might have to live with the effects of their indulgence for months. A naive lad tempted by expensive pastry would end up making frequent trips to the camp sinks.
Illness in the Federal armies had held steady since the sickly summer months. The Army of the Potomac was only marginally healthier now than it had been in July, though one surgeon claimed at least a third of the men receiving medical treatment should never have been enrolled.27 A regimental sick list of 150 or more was not uncommon. Although suffering no significant casualties since the Peninsula campaign, the 2nd Michigan now mustered only around 600 men of an original 1,080. On November 28 an Augusta newspaper devoted its entire front page to listing men from Maine currently in hospitals.28
Widely varying cleanliness and sanitation standards helped explain disparities in disease rates. A Connecticut volunteer reported a well-ordered camp with plenty of spring water, while a Pennsylvania corporal told his sister that no one should be afraid of a little dirt in coffee or meat. In some camps rats ran freely, even scurrying over sleeping men at night. Surgeons’ detailed instructions on constructing and maintaining sinks escaped the attention of ignorant, careless, or indifferent volunteers. A New York doctor suggested that any man who defecated or urinated in camp should have to wear a barrel over his head with the “offensive matter... shoveled upon the barrel-head directly under the offender’s nostrils.” It is unlikely that such a punishment was ever carried out. Besides, Virginia’s clay soil made effective sanitation difficult in the most scrupulously policed camps.29
By the end of 1862 mortality rates from disease were reaching wartime highs. Childhood maladies had hit hard during the first wave of recruitment, and now a second outbreak of measles occurred. Like the Rebels, Yankees also contracted smallpox, and several regiments began vaccinations. Medical reports included the usual run of headaches and colds; damp weather and sleeping on the ground naturally led to rheumatism, bronchitis, and pneumonia. Anyone awake at night could hear continual coughing.30
Fevers and intestinal diseases remained the real killers. By the fall the number of typhoid deaths was rising again. The Army of the Potomac would lose 116 men to the disease in November and 287 the following month. Pvt. Peter W. Homer of the 1st New Jersey Cavalry contracted typhoid in early December. Quite “emaciated,” he was finally admitted to a Washington hospital on January 2, 1863. Suffering from an “exhausting diarrhea, from ten to twelve thin watery evacuations daily,” he also complained of “abdominal tenderness.” By mid-month his condition had improved. But two more serious bouts of diarrhea at the beginning and end of February seriously weakened him, and on March 2, at age twenty-six, he died.31
Diarrhea and dysentery, the most deadly of all camp diseases, persisted even after the weather had turned cool. Doctors usually prescribed bland diets, but some adopted more radical measures such as rectal injections with tincture of opium. Soldiers had their own favorite remedies, such as strong tea, but the army diet, poor sanitation, and lethal sutler pies often kept them trotting to the sinks. By the time chronic sufferers reached a regimental hospital, much less one in Washington or Philadelphia, they often had only a few days to live. Autopsies revealed badly inflamed, discolored intestines and colons, sometimes with spots and black deposits.32
On November 30, 1862, Pvt. James R. Woodworth of the 44th New York began caring for his tent mate, Albert A. Smith, who had “no control of his bowels and nasties his clothes and blankets.” One night after Smith had done this three times, Woodworth spent the next day boiling his clothing. Delirious much of the time, poor Smith imagined himself in combat and, during one violent fit, sliced another soldier’s hand with a hatchet. Finally taken to the new camp hospital, Smith died shortly after midnight on December 7. The next day Woodworth, who loved his twenty-two-year-old friend “almost as a brother,” helped bury him and carved his name and regiment into a pine pole.33
By the time of Smith’s death, surgeons were establishing hospitals in vacant houses, though a Massachusetts colonel complained that the generals had taken the best buildings for themselves, leaving feverish men to shiver in drafty barns or freeze in fly tents. Anticipating large numbers of sick and wounded, Medical Director Jonathan Letterman stocked 500 hospital tents.34 Quiet, intense struggles with disease took place in these tents where generals seldom ventured and whose horrors home folks either refused to contemplate or could not fathom.
It was little wonder some men avoided seeking medical help until it was too late. Soldiers actually feared the hospitals more than typhoid or dysentery. The gruel was bad enough, and bullets sometimes seemed kinder than the human attendants in these places. Surrounded by dying men every day, surgeons grew callous and stewards sometimes stole from their helpless charges. One poor fellow was even murdered for his money. Doctors were bound to be criticized either for being rough with truly ill men or for coddling malingerers. Officers complained that soldiers were too easily sent to convalescent camps, and what a crusty Regular termed a “vast number of shirks, semi-sick, pretended sick, and bald-faced liars” somehow received furloughs.35
Increasing numbers of men, however, breathed their last in the hospitals or in their tents. A Michigan soldier wrote to his wife that two comrades had died on December 4 and another was near death.36 Funerals, though commonplace, still made a deep impression. An escort marching slowly with arms reversed carried the deceased in a rude coffin made from cracker boxes or barrel pieces, sometimes accompanied by a dirge from the regimental band or perhaps a fife and muffled drum. A chaplain would read some scripture, offer a prayer, and repeat the man’s dying words about faith in Christ. Then soldiers fired three volleys over the grave, usually at sunset, and everyone marched back to camp, perhaps to the tune of “Yankee Doodle.” Men who witnessed these simple ceremonies often recalled the details years later.37
Soldiers long remembered the first death in their regiment, an event that brought many a young man face-to-face with his own mortality. As John M. Brackett of the 21st Connecticut was lowered into the grave, Dwight Vick thought about the wife and three children his comrade had left back home and perhaps about his own family as well.38 Some of the men were less sentimental. One soldier decided that the $5.00 owed him by a recently deceased friend should be used to ship the man’s body home. The pervasiveness of death hardened soldiers to pain and honed an edge of cynicism. “But it’s all right,” a Pennsylvania lieutenant remarked after several men died in camp, “They’re paid 13 dolls. a month to come out here and be buried, the government bearing the funeral expenses.” If Halleck and the War Department had sent enough supplies, perhaps not so many boys would have died.39
But as always the humdrum days passed. In the midst of the campaign, life in camp began to fall once again into familiar patterns. If a fellow could get enough to eat and had a warm fire, he might spend an agreeable evening telling stories or gabbing about everything from women to politics. A relaxed smoke at the end of the day could almost make up for other hardships. Such ordinary pleasures cemented friendships and fostered the kind of unit cohesion that turned highly individualistic, democratic citizens into soldiers who would obey orders and fight well. As they developed pride in themselves, their companies, and their regiments, men soon came to believe that soldiers from their state were the best in the army. Shared suffering in camp, not to mention on the battlefields, forged them into a true band of brothers—brothers who had their squabbles but who would also pull together in a crisis.40
Because the army had not yet moved into winter quarters, recreation remained simple and serendipitous. The men played a little baseball or rode horses. A few glee clubs sang old songs around the fires at night, but familiar tunes and sentimental lyrics only added to the ennui of camp life.41
Approximately 90 percent of Federal soldiers were literate, so there was a steady demand for reading matter, everything from newspapers to Shakespeare. Some regiments had their own libraries hauled about in boxes by a surgeon or chaplain. Pious soldiers pored over the testaments and tracts while others devoured illustrated newspapers such as Frank Leslie’s and Harper’s Weekly or perused trashy novels. The men especially enjoyed newspapers; even for those with little education a “company reader” helped them keep up with affairs back home. Soldiers passed around books and papers until they fell apart. They begged their families for almost any kind of printed material to while away the idle hours. Cut off from newspapers and magazines during the recent march, a Pennsylvanian now understood how “war and barbarism” went hand in hand.42
Boredom, bad food, and cold were a surefire recipe for trouble. Tempers grew short and enlisted men became insubordinate, failing to show up for roll calls or falling asleep on picket duty. Topping the list of offenses were drinking, gambling, fighting, and stealing, not to mention simply taking off for a lark somewhere. Even with the army on the march, far too many of its officers lingered in Washington and other northern cities. What a Baltimore editor termed the government’s “rose-water policy” encouraged laxity and even desertion. Despite strict orders to the contrary, officers still left camp too often, and some naive privates did not realize they needed a pass to visit Falmouth.43
One New Yorker tried to reassure folks back in Rochester that the demoralizing effects of camp life had been greatly exaggerated, but families had reason to worry. Alcohol posed the largest temptation. Despite the provost marshals’ diligence, contraband whiskey entered the camps in hollowed-out books and other clever devices. Officers, including several generals, were notorious drinkers, and enlisted men followed suit. In the 21st Massachusetts an accommodating chaplain brought hard liquor from Washington, presumably for medicinal use, but a spree with the 51st New York earned him a severe reprimand for “degrading his cloth and disgracing his calling.” Nighttime tippling occasioned noisy brawls, sometimes punctuated with bayonet wounds and cannon firing. Many a surgeon or quartermaster fell victim to the bottle. According to official military statistics, alcoholism rates had leveled off since the beginning of the war, which only meant the problem remained serious.44
The soldiers cultivated other vices to varying degrees. In contrast to Lee and his pious officers, Federal generals did little to discourage gambling. And there were always women. Venereal disease rates naturally declined the farther the army traveled from the Washington brothels. Even visiting matrons from the Sanitary Commission attracted attention, and the mere appearance of a woman in camp usually merited a detailed description in a diary or letter. Some men cared little about a female’s loyalty. One hapless cavalry lieutenant on picket duty near Stafford Court House was captured by Confederates and lost his commission after supping pleasantly with a Virginia woman.45
Various incidents highlighted a larger dilemma made more troublesome by the unexpected and unwelcome halt in the Federal advance. Few soldiers could argue with the need for discipline in the ranks, but agreement on how to define discipline and how to maintain it remained elusive. Officers who were sticklers for regulations risked alienating enlisted men who resented anyone lording it over them and who bristled over the slightest mistreatment. “I can’t say that I feel very free today,” a Massachusetts recruit mused on his twenty-first birthday. “I am a high private in the front rank, and subject to the orders of a man.” Nothing pleased the average soldier more than to see a martinet’s pretensions deflated. The members of one New York regiment cheered heartily when several officers in Howard’s division were court-martialed for consuming rations rightfully belonging to enlisted men.
Like their Confederate counterparts, the Federals considered themselves independent citizens of a republic and resisted becoming cogs in a military machine. Maintaining discipline with soldiers who shunned hierarchy and questioned orders tried the patience and ability of inexperienced officers. Many of the “men” were hardly more than young boys, and their enlistment began a transformation into adulthood just as the more common vices—notably swearing, drinking, gambling, whoring, and brawling—marked their coming of age. Once when a fun-loving but not terribly bright private in a Rhode Island battery refused to stop horsing around while loading hay, a saber-waving sergeant accidentally stabbed him to death. Higher-ranking officers refused to bring charges against the sergeant, and a captain threatened to punish severely anyone who even hinted at vengeance. To accommodate the widely varying degrees of maturity among the men, officers tried to establish a balance between regulations and respect for individuals. The boys insisted on being treated like men, but the looser and more democratic ways of the war’s first two years slowly gave way to a harsher discipline—a discipline designed to foster both self-control and courage.46
Punishments were thus a delicate matter because they tended to be both severe and public. Insubordination merited stern correction. When a private in the 13th New York told a corporal to go to the devil, or words to that effect, he had to carry a thirty-pound log strapped to his back for ten hours and forfeit a month’s pay. Other infractions received equally stiff penalties. Anyone caught stealing had to either stand on a barrel or march around camp wearing a board emblazoned with the word “thief.” According to a Pennsylvania volunteer, such treatment seemed excessive for a “little fellow who stole a few crackers... when he was nearly starved.” Men guilty of various misdemeanors might be sentenced to policing the camp for several days; in some regiments offenses such as unauthorized foraging and drunkenness drew fines.47
Dirty hands, faces, or muskets discovered during inspections could also earn offenders a trip to the guardhouse. Occasionally carelessness about appearances signified deep-seated problems. Men became so homesick they no longer cared about themselves or anything else. When recruits fell into this kind of funk, it took severe measures by their comrades to shock or scare them out of it.48
The best medicine for homesickness was encouraging words from family and friends. In 1862 the U.S. Post Office issued some 251,307 stamps, but that number soared to 338,340 the following year as the volume of wartime correspondence soared. Home news boosted morale almost as much as victories or good rations. Writing and reading letters did far more than ease camp monotony. It allowed soldiers to convey some sense of their momentous (and mundane) experiences to civilians.49
The soldiers’ desire for letters easily surpassed the abilities of even conscientious home folks to supply them. Although the Federals delivered the mail more efficiently than the Confederates, Burnside’s troops would never have believed it. And of course when one regiment received no mail, a neighboring outfit always seemed to be tearing through a large sack of letters. With armies so often on the move, prompt delivery could hardly be guaranteed even for properly addressed letters, by no means a certainty itself. Most soldiers endured lengthy periods with nary a missive. “It does not suit a man with a family to be in the army,” Col. Robert McAllister sadly remarked after more than six weeks with no word from home.50
Irregular mail threatened relationships already strained by separation: “i do not know if i have Relatives or Friends yet on the Earth,” a Michigan volunteer wrote sadly. Regular correspondence became a test of love and devotion; no word from home drove some men to the verge of a mental breakdown. A sudden halt in mail immediately betokened trouble at home, perhaps illness or death. The soldiers themselves seldom found much time for writing letters on the march, and they assumed their friends and families had more opportunities to keep up a correspondence. Descriptions of awkwardly scratching out a note on a cracker-box desk in flickering light on a cold night with smoke blowing in the eyes were undoubtedly meant to make the home folks feel guilty and prod them into writing more often themselves.51
The men treasured letters and read them until they nearly fell apart. “You do not know how consoling and comforting your letters are,” a New York surgeon informed his wife. “As you say, ‘it is almost like seeing you,’ and they are the only things which reconcile me to my situation.” Some soldiers carefully preserved their correspondence, but others burned it rather than risk its capture by Confederates who would likely read it for amusement or mockery.52
The soldiers’ letters ultimately revealed men torn between patriotic and family obligations. They might speak of duty and honor, and women might even embrace those values, but that hardly lessened the trauma of separation. “The soldier when he enters the field, is presumed to sever all ties of home,” mused a Wisconsin surgeon. But this was impossible; just as “a man cannot have a home without a country, but what is country without a home, that center of all his hopes and his affections!” The soldier enlisted to fight for his family but soon realized how much he was expected to sacrifice for so little reward. “Strike from his affections that of home and family, and how much of country will be left? When I get back I’ll ask some old bachelor to tell me.” Company and regiment became partial substitutes for family and community, but the men’s hopes and dreams remained at home. “Bless the dear children,” Lt. Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the 20th Maine wrote with deep feeling. “I don’t dare to think of them too much. It makes me rather sad, & then I do not forget that I am here in the face of death every day.”53
Thoughts of home often rushed in without warning and could not be controlled. Sitting in his tent with a fire burning, an Indiana major imagined his wife and children attending church. Seeing Confederate civilians driven from their houses prompted even the more hard-hearted Federals to think about how their own families would fare under similar circumstances. The unforgiving Virginia mud and rain and snow only made the more familiar surroundings of home seem more attractive. “I have seen no state I like so well as I do Michigan,” commented one lonesome Wolverine.54
Being away from home turned many soldiers into hopeless romantics who stared at family pictures or penned ardent love letters. George W. Ballock, a member of General Hancock’s staff, told his wife how he longed for the day when “I can leave war . . . and bask once more in the sunshine of your love.” At age thirty-seven he admitted that the “stern realities of life may have somewhat tempered the vivacity of youth.” Yet he loved her with all his heart, and his “only regret is, Jennie, that I have not been able to love you better.” Tonight, he assured her in one letter, “you will be with me in dreams. I shall feel your loving arms around me. Your soft cheek will be pressed to mine.” These conventional sentiments, which might run for a page or more in letter after letter in which these men never seemed to run out of adjectives to describe their wives’ perfection, did not disguise the erotic undertones. Although sexual desire was seldom expressed openly, a plain-speaking New Hampshire sergeant commented on the “hearty” appearance of a comrade recently returned to the regiment: “I reckon it didn’t hurt him any to sleep with a woman a spel.”55
Memories of playing with children, the simple pleasures of a walk or a game, were bittersweet. Short notes and school compositions from their children helped men retain home ties. Although fathers could offer a few words of advice or admonitions about the importance of good character, the war often intruded into efforts to maintain customary relationships. Dreaming about a frolic with his son and daughter, a New York engineer awoke in “desolate woods with my wearied and fatigued comrades sleeping around.” In the “dead of night” he could only pray for a safe return home while realizing how quickly his children would be grown. More ominously, a New York infantryman had a nightmare about Frankie, Charlie, and little Alta climbing a steep mountain. He at first saw a “vast army of soldiers in battle array,” but this turned out to be an “army of angels making heavenly music and our children were hurrying to join them.”56
Yet for most families keeping love alive involved much less frightening and more mundane matters. From Lancaster, Wisconsin, Catherine Eaton begged her husband, Samuel, a chaplain in the famous Iron Brigade, to wangle a furlough. Struggling as a minister’s wife in his absence but gaining confidence in “find[ing] my sphere,” she prized his letters yet grew sad as the holidays approached. Fearing that Samuel might shrink his new flannel shirt, she sent detailed washing instructions. Their son, James, reported doing well in Latin and Greek but doubted he could handle both during the next school term. Soldiers savored such homey details. Pvt. James R. Wood-worth of the 44th New York nearly cried when he received letters from his wife, Phoebe. He laughed at reports of their little sons’ pranks and wrote fervently of his undying love. A pious man, Woodworth liked to imagine them both reading scripture at the same time and hoped their separation would bring them closer to God.57 There were no dramas here, merely the struggles of ordinary families in an extraordinary time.
Despite the obvious strains of separation, the usual joys and sorrows of family life persisted, but now the women dealt with them alone. However much couples tried to preserve traditional relationships, wives had to do much more on their own because their husbands could offer nothing but advice-filled letters. Women might worry about their menfolk being corrupted by camp life and might even try to assert traditional moral authority at a distance, but more practical matters took precedence. Money problems worsened with pay so often in arrears; soldiers could do little for their struggling families but urge economy. Working out disagreements by mail proved even more difficult. Pained by news of his father’s remarriage, a Maine volunteer hesitated to send the expected best wishes. Pvt. Edwin O. Wentworth of the 37th Massachusetts complained about his wife making coats when she had her hands full taking care of their daughter, Anna. Carrie Wentworth had larger concerns, and as rumors of an impending battle circulated, she spoke for countless women. “I do hope the war may speedily close.... Still, before that time, there must be some hard fighting. I hope you may not see it. I suppose I am selfish, but we all are.”58
As always, death permanently severed relationships, at least in this world. The soldiers could not help thinking about countless families desolated by the deaths of loved ones in hospitals and on battlefields. Yet many of these same men had to cope with the loss of friends and family at home. A Pennsylvanian advised his fiancée not to mourn her deceased grandmother excessively or become “old maidish.” Soldiers steeled themselves with that religious fatalism so pervasive among the Civil War generation. Noting the irony of his beloved wife dying quietly at home while he survived the hardships of war, a Massachusetts man reduced his grief to a familiar formula: “Such are the inscrutable decrees of providence.” Given the frequency of death at home and in the field, it should not be surprising that between 1862 and 1863 sales of life insurance policies more than doubled.59
Loneliness remained a constant as soldiers went about their normal routines. By the end of November and early December, the Army of the Potomac had largely settled into the camps along the Rappahannock. The soldiers spent their days drilling—typically a company drill in the morning, battalion drill in the early afternoon, and a dress parade toward evening. A Pennsylvania captain estimated that this amounted to around four hours for older regiments and five hours for newer ones. All this precise maneuvering was designed to avoid accidental shootings in tightly packed formations. It also helped generals prepare their troops for combat, though the lessons might be quickly forgotten once the bullets started flying. Many outfits clearly needed the training, and even as soldiers groused about the numbing repetition and the tedium of reviews by high-ranking generals, the men came to take pride in their regiments’ proficiency on the parade ground.60
As much as they disliked drill, soldiers usually loathed picket duty. One late November morning privates William McCarter and Samuel Foltz of the 116th Pennsylvania retired from their post along the Rappahannock to a vacant brick building in Falmouth. By three in the afternoon, however, they were back on picket again, this time in the open. They had little food, though a man from another regiment shared a large turnip with McCarter. Soon the wind picked up, and their eyes began to water, ears began to hurt, and blood began slowly congealing in their veins—or so it seemed. McCarter and Foltz huddled against a bridge abutment, cursing the orders that forbade fires. Unable to stand the numbing cold any longer, Foltz slipped back into town, but McCarter stayed and tried to fight off sleep with his coat pulled over his head. About 11:00 P.M. the sergeant of the guard found him, still standing but hunched over and presumed dead. Once back in the brick building, however, McCarter responded to warm blankets and strong coffee. That same night three men from other regiments did freeze to death.61
Because both sides considered firing on a picket little better than murder, such duty was largely uneventful though certainly monotonous and uncomfortable. The men would rotate between various posts front and rear.62 Suffering like McCarter from the cold and dampness, some volunteers defied orders and started fires. After standing guard in the rain, pickets often had to sleep in wet clothes. Typically they complained and threatened mutiny but did their duty.63
Improving roads to speed the arrival of badly needed supplies made a lot more sense to the average volunteer than standing picket, but it also meant much harder work. Detachments of soldiers cut timber for “corduroying” roads and reconstructing bridges between Belle Plain and Falmouth. Two regiments of the Third Corps used 300 teams of horses to build a 1,100-foot expanse through a swamp. With some exaggeration a Pennsylvania private boasted of working ten hours on the roads with the mud up to the mules’ bellies.64 Other men unloaded or guarded supplies at Aquia Landing, built earthworks to protect artillery, or dug sinks. Whether this activity meant the army was about to fight again or go into winter quarters became the most hotly debated topic around the campfires.65
During this quiet period men calculated ways to improve their own positions in the army. For some soldiers enlistment had temporarily relieved the frustration of searching for a civilian career, and however much they might talk of fighting for ideals such as the Union, many could not hide their intense desire for promotion. An enlisted man in the 44th New York who badly wanted to become an officer pressed his father to lobby the governor for a commission. Lieutenants looked to be captains, and captains to become majors; the higher the rank, the more burning the ambition. Colonels and brigadier generals who otherwise complained of officers trying to wield political influence wrote directly to Lincoln and members of Congress pleading their cases. Maj. Gen. George Gordon Meade, a division commander longing for corps command, bitterly complained to his wife about “intrigues and bickering” in the army slowing his ascent. With some justification Maj. Elijah H. C. Cavins of the 14th Indiana decided that too many generals cared more about promotions than about winning the war.66
Yet could the two goals be so neatly separated? As the army languished in camps along the Rappahannock, the Federals suffered from the usual but sometimes deadly aspects of camp life: the cold, the food, the disease, the boredom, and the loneliness. There was nothing extraordinary about their lives during the last part of November 1862, but the commonplace formed the backdrop for what lay ahead. Everyday experiences shaped the attitudes of men as they also pondered their immediate future. Ambitious officers need not have worried; there would soon be plenty of opportunities for promotion.