Hardtack And Coffee The Unwritten Story Of Army Life

Hardtack And Coffee: The Unwritten Story Of Army Life

John D. Billings...

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Preface

During the summer of 1881 I was a sojourner for a few weeks at a popular hotel in the White Mountains. Among the Two hundred or more guests who were enjoying its retirement and good cheer were from Twelve to Twenty lads, varying in age from Ten to Fifteen years. When tea had been disposed of, and darkness had put an end to their daily romp and hurrah without, they were wont to take in charge a gentleman from Chicago, formerly a gallant soldier in the Army of the Cumberland, and in a quiet corner

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I. The Tocsin Of War

“A score of Millions hear the cryAnd herald it abroad,To arms they fly to do or dieFor liberty and God.” E. P. Dyer. “And yet they keep gathering and marching away!Has the nation turned soldier-and all in a day?There's the father and son!While the miller takes gunWith the dust of the wheat still whitening his hair;Pray where are they going with this martial air?” F. E. Brooks. On the 6th of November, 1860, Abraham Lincoln, the candidate of the Republican party, was elected President of the Unite

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II. Enlisting

“O, did you see him in the street dressed up in army blue,When drums and trumpets into town their storm of music threw— A louder tune than all the winds could muster in the air,The Rebel winds that tried so hard our flag in strips to tear?” Lucy Larcom. Hardly had the “Three months men” reached the field before it was discovered that a mistake had been made in not calling out a larger number of troops, and for longer service;— it took a long time to realize what a gigantic rebellion we had on ou

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III. How The Soldiers Were Sheltered

“The heath this night must be my bed,The bracken curtain for my head,My lullaby the warder's tread,Far, far from love and thee, Mary.To-morrow eve, more stilly laid,My couch may be my bloody plaid,My vesper song, thy wail, sweet maid.It will not waken me, Mary.” Lady of the Lake. After enlistment, what? This deed done, the responsibility of the citizen for himself ceased in a measure, and Uncle Sam took him in charge. A word here to make clear to the ninformed the distinction between the militia

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IV. Life In Tents

“Sir, he made a chimney in my father's house, and the bricks are alive at this day to testify it.”King Henry VI. In the last chapter I described quite fully the principal varieties of shelter that our troops used in the war. In this I wish to detail their daily life in those tents when they settled down in camp. Enter with me into a Sibley tent which is not stockaded. If it is cold weather, we shall find the cone-shaped stove, which I have already mentioned, setting in the centre. These stoves w

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V. Life In Log Huts

“Then he built him a hut,And in it he putThe carcass of Robinson Crusoe.” Old song. The camp of a regiment or battery was supposed to be laid out in regular order as definitely prescribed by Army Regulations. These, I may state in a general way, provided that each company of a regiment should pitch its tents in Two files, facing on a street which was at right angles with the color-line of the regiment. This color-line was the assigned place for regimental formation. Then, without going into deta

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VI. Jonahs And Beats

“Good people, I'll sing you a ditty,So bear with me all ye who can;I make an appeal to your pity,For I'm a most unlucky man.'Twas under an unlucky planetThat I a poor mortal was born;My existence since First I began itHas been very sad and forlorn.Then do not make sport of my troubles,But pity me all ye who can,For I'm an uncomfortable, horrible, terrible, inconsolable, unlucky man.” Old song. In a former chapter I made the statement that Sibley tents furnished quarters capacious enough for Twel

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VII. Army Rations: What They Were.— How They Were Distributed.— How They Were Cooked

“Here's a pretty mess!” The Mikado. “God bless the pudding,God bless the meat,God bless us all;Sit down and eat.” A Harvard Student's Blessing, 1796. “Fall in for your rations, company a!”My theme is Army Rations. And while what I have to say on this subject may be applicable to all of the armies of the Union in large measure, yet, as they did not fare just alike, I will say, once for all, that my descriptions of army life pertain, when not otherwise specified, especially to that life as it was

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VIII. Offences And Punishments

“They braced my aunt against a board,To make her straight and tall;They laced her up, they starved her down,To make her light and small;They pinched her feet, they singed her hair,They screwed it up with pins;— Oh, never mortal suffered moreIn penance for her sins.” Holmes. No popular history of the war has yet treated in detail of the various indiscretions of which soldiers were guilty, nor of the punishments which followed breaches of discipline. Perhaps such a record is wanting because there

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IX. A Day In Camp

A partial description of the daily of the rank and file of the army in the monotony of camp life, more especially as it was lived during the years 1861, ‘62, and ‘63, covers the subjectmatter treated in this chapter. I do not expect it to be all new to the outside public even, who have attended the musters of the State militia, and have witnessed something of the routine that is followed there. This routine was the same in the Union armies in many respects, only with the latter there was a reali

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X. Raw Recruits

“She asked for men, and up he spoke, my handsome and hearty Sam,“I'll die for the dear old Union, if she'll take me as I am ”:And if a better man than he there's mother that can show,From Maine to Minnesota, then let the people know.” Lucy Larcom. Many facts bearing upon the subject of this sketch have been already presented in the opening chapter, but much more remains to be told, and the reader will pardon me, I trust, for now injecting a little bit of personal history to illustrate what Thous

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XI. Special Rations.— Boxes From Home.— Sutlers

“Can we all forget the bills on Sutler's ledger haply yet,Which we feared he would remember, and we hoped he would forget?May we not recall the morning when the foe were threatening harm,And the trouble chiefly bruited was, “The coffee isn't warm?” Prof. S. B. Sumner. If there was a red-letter day to be found anywhere in the army life of a soldier,it occurred when he was the recipient of a box sent to him by the dear ones and friends he left to enter the service. Whenever it became clear, or eve

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XII. Foraging

“Can we all forget the foraging the boys were prone to do,As with problematic rations we were marching Dixie through;And the dulcet screech of chanticleer or soothing squeal of swine,When occurred the grateful halt or brief excursion from the line?” Prof. S. B. Sumner. There was One other source from which soldiers— at least, some soldiers— replenished their larder, or added to its variety. The means employed to accomplish this end was known as Foraging, which is generally understood to mean a s

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XIII. Corps And Corps Badges

“You'll find lovely fightingAlong the whole line.” Kearny. What was an Army corps? The name is One adopted into the English language from the French, and retains essentially its original meaning. It has been customary since the time of Napoleon I. to organize armies of more than Fifty or Sixty thousand men into what the French call Corps d'armee or, as we say, Army corps. It is a familiar fact that soon after the outbreak of the Rebellion Lieutenant-General Scott, who had served with great disti

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XIV. Some Inventions And Devices Of The War

That “Necessity is the mother of invention” nothing can more clearly and fully demonstrate than war. I will devote this chapter to presenting some facts from the last war which illustrate this maxim. As soon as the tocsin of war had sounded, and men were summoned to take the field, a demand was at once made, on both sides of Mason and Dixon's line, for a new class of materials— the materials of war, for which there had been no demand of consequence for nearly Fifty years. The arms, such as they

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XV. The Army Mule

“Two teamsters have paused, in the shade of the pool,Rehearsing the tricks of the old army mule;They have little to sayOf the blue and the gray,Which they wore when the garments meant shedding of blood— They're discussing the mule and “Virginia mud.”” It has often been said that the South could not have been worsted in the Rebellion had it not been for the steady re-enforcement brought to the Union side by the mule. To just what extent his services hastened the desired end, it would be impossibl

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XVI. Hospitals And Ambulances

The sketch embodied in this chapter is an attempt in a limited space to give the public a more adequate idea of the Medical department of the army, what it was, how it grew up, and something of what it accomplished. I enter upon it with a quasi-apology for its incompleteness, understanding fully how inadequate any mere sketch must be regarded by those whose labors in this department made its record One of the most remarkable in the history of the war; yet, like all the other topics treated in th

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XVII. Scattering Shots

“His coat was e'er so much too short,His pants a mile too wide,And when he marched could not keep stepHowever much he tried.” The clothing. Forty-two dollars was the sum allowed by the government to clothe tile private soldier for the space of year. The articles included in his outfit were a cap or hat (usually the former), blouse, overcoat, dress coat, trousers, shirts, drawers, socks, shoes, a woollen and a rubber blanket. This was the wardrobe of the Infantry. It should be said, however, that

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XVIII. Breaking Camp.— On The March

And now comes “Boots and saddles!” Oh! there's hurrying to and fro,And saddling up in busy haste— for what, we do not know.Sometimes 'twas but a false alarm, sometimes it meant a fight;Sometimes it came in daytime, and sometimes it came at night. The subject of this chapter is a very suggestive One to the old soldier. It covers a whole realm of experience which it would be nearly impossible to exhaust. But there is much in this as in other experiences which was common to all longterm veterans, a

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XIX. Army Wagon-Trains

That every man who swears once drove a muleIs not believed by any but a fool;But whosoe'er drove mules and did not swearCan be relied on for an honest prayer. Before giving a history of the wagon-trains which formed a part, and a Necessary part, of every army, I will briefly refer to what was known as k “Grant's military Railroad,” which was really a railroad built For the army, and used solely by it. When the Army of the Potomac appeared before Petersburg, City Point, on the James River, was ma

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XX. Army Road And Bridge Builders

“A line of black, which bends and floatsOn the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.” Longfellow. If there is One class of men in this country who more than all others should appreciate spacious and well graded highways, or ready means of transit from One section into another, that class is the veterans of the Union Army; for those among them who “Hoofed it” from Two to Four years in Rebeldom travelled more miles across country in that period than they did on regularly constituted thoroughfares.

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XXI. Talking Flags And Torches

Yes, there were flags in the army which talked for the soldiers, and I cannot furnish a more entertaining chapter than One which will describe How they did it, When they did it, and what they did it for. True, of the flags used in the service told stories of their own. What more eloquent than “Old glory,” with its Thirteen stripes, reminding us of our small beginning as a nation, its blue field, originally occupied by the cross of the English flag when Washington First gave it to the breeze in C

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Index

Albany, N. Y., 162 Alexander, E. Porter, 406-7 Alexandria, Va., 48,121,331 Allatoona, Ga., 400-401 Ambulances, 302-15 Anderson, Robert, 22 Andrew, John A., 23, 25 Antietam, 71,176,253, 286,287, 378 Ashby, Mass., 274 Atkinson, D. Webster, 392 Atlanta, 400,403,405 Avery House, 402 Baltimore, 116 Banks, Nathaniel P., 23, 71 Beale, James, The Battle Flags of the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg, 338-39 Beats, 94-102, 174,312 Bell, John, 16 Belle Plain, Va., 369 Benham, Henry W., 391 Big Shanty, Ga.

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