Chapter 26

In This Chapter

What the common soldier faced

Medical care during the war

The many roles of women in the war

T he lot of the common soldier in the Civil War was very similar whether the man wore blue or gray. Although the Union soldier was generally better fed and clothed than his Confederate counterpart, the soldiers experienced the same boring routines, the same exhausting marches, griped the same gripes about their officers, and faced the same fears in battle. At times, this common experience drew them close together in comradeship, but also made them fierce opponents on the battlefield.

The women of the North and South took part in the war in many ways, serving as nurses, factory workers, farmhands, or spies. Likewise, African Americans served the same roles as the women, but also fought in both armies. As a people, African Americans were transformed by the war in a way that no one had thought possible four years earlier. For soldiers, women, and former slaves alike, the experience of the war not only brought about changes that affected them for the rest of their lives, but also brought about changes that have affected the lives of people in the United States ever since.

Meeting the Common Soldier: Everyman

The soldier of the Civil War, most typically in his early 20s, was a highly independent character. Almost half of the men who served had been farmers or worked on a farm before the war. About a third were skilled and unskilled laborers, and one-tenth held white collar or professional jobs. Although he showed respect for authority and submitted to the logic of military drill and discipline, he maintained his individuality, usually displayed by the slouch he adopted in ranks. Soldiers respected good officers and they responded willingly to their orders, but they also displayed open contempt for poor or incompetent leaders. Privates displayed little or no respect for rank, often addressing a general in the field as he would another private. Because furloughs (an approved leave of absence from the army) were rare, soldiers often decided on their own when their services were required. Desertions, which the men called taking “French leave,” were common, especially in the Southern armies. Some soldiers returned, and others did not. The bright faces of youth in carefully kept uniforms became veterans’ faces, now browned by exposure, their bodies tough and lean, careless of appearance, carrying only the essentials, and capable of enduring tremendous hardships. In the process, Johnny Reb and Billy Yank became some of the best fighting men in the world. For his service, a Union soldier was paid $11 (increased to $16 in 1864) a month; the Confederate soldier was paid $13.

Eating what the army gave you

Soldiers throughout the centuries have always been concerned with the quality and quantity of their food. Fresh food was (and still is) always preferred over preserved rations, but it was (and is) often hard to come by. Although Union troops could expect to see rations of fresh bread and meat, and a regular coffee ration, Confederate soldiers saw less and less of such items as the war went on. The Confederate soldier’s diet was usually a whipsaw of feast or famine. When fresh food was not available, both sides shared the same basic diet of hardtack (a dry flour cracker so hard that it often had to be broken with a rifle butt) and salt pork (or “sowbelly” or “salt horse” as the soldiers called it). As time went on, even these rations became hard to come by in the Confederate army. For example, in the winter of 1863, the Confederate soldier’s ration consisted of 18 ounces of flour and four ounces of bacon (a generous term for it, according to those who received it). Rice, sugar, and molasses would arrive infrequently to supplement the ration.

Living the life of a soldier

Unlike the often-romanticized stories of a comfortable outdoor life, in reality heat, dirt, long marches, thirst, freezing cold, and disease were the soldier’s constant companions. The long winters in camp were stultifyingly boring for the men of both armies. They whiled away the hours and days waiting for the next meal or playing card games. When things were quiet, an informal truce would be called at points in the line where opposing units were close. The Yankees would trade coffee, an item almost nonexistent in the South, for tobacco, something hard to come by in the North. The men would also trade newspapers, talk quietly (and disparagingly) about the war and their officers, then head back to their own lines. After the men were on the march again, all the good relations with the enemy were just a memory. Soldiers also got rid of packs of cards or sets of dice on the march. Cards and gambling were considered a sinful pastime in the nineteenth-century United States, and soldiers did not want to have such symbols of depravity on their bodies if they were killed. If they survived, of course, soldiers bought or made another deck as soon as they could and returned to their old habits.

Wearing the blue or gray

By 1863, soldiers of both armies had learned what was useful and what was not. The Union soldier wore a blue wool blouse over a flannel shirt, and light blue wool trousers held up by suspenders. He sometimes exchanged the uncomfortable regulation knapsack for a rolled blanket, which he slept on at night. He put this over his left shoulder and tied the ends on his right hip. The blanket bedroll usually had in it extra clothing, personal items, and a poncho (a waterproof covering). In addition to his blanket bedroll, he carried a cartridge box on a long strap, which hung on a strap across his body in the same manner as the blanket bedroll. The cartridge box carried 40 rounds of ammunition. If there was time before a battle, soldiers were issued extra ammo, which they usually put in their pockets. See Figure 26-1.

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As a means of unit identification adopted during the war, Union soldiers wore colored symbols on the tops of their caps. Each corps in the army had a symbol: a Maltese cross, a circle, a diamond, and so forth. Each division in that corps had a different color assigned to the corps symbol: red for the first division, white for the second, and blue for the third. Oftentimes a brass letter designating the company would be added below the symbol. These symbols became highly prized, and were the forerunners of the unit patches worn on U.S. military uniforms today.

The Confederate soldier’s uniform usually was hardly a uniform at all. He wore what ever he could, often captured from Union supply wagons or stripped from the dead. He was usually bearded, his hair unkempt and uncut. He wore a weather-beaten wool hat, with the front brim often pushed up. He wore a short, dirty, ragged gray jacket over a homespun cotton shirt. His trousers, as dirty and ragged as his jacket (or worse), were held up with a leather belt, which held the percussion cap box and the bayonet. Sometimes, a Confederate soldier would obtain a Union belt with its large oval brass plate marked “US” in raised letters. He almost always wore the belt with the “US” buckle upside down. He carried his blanket bedroll, cartridge box, haversack, canteen, in the same manner as his Northern counterpart (see Figure 26-2). Because the Confederacy manufactured so little equipment, most of what he carried had been captured. In combat, he usually pushed the blanket bedroll further behind his back, and shifted the cartridge box to the front of his body for easier loading and firing. If he had shoes, they were in bad shape, as were his socks, if he had those. It was not unusual to see a Confederate soldier carrying a frying pan slung over his back. Both in camp and on the march, frying pans were invaluable for cooking rations.

Slung over the Confederate soldier’s left shoulder and hanging on his right hip were a tin cup and canteen and a canvas haversack containing the day’s rations. On his leather belt, he carried a leather pouch carrying percussion caps, which ignited the powder charge loaded in his musket, and a bayonet. The bayonet was an all-purpose tool — used for digging, for spitting meat over a fire, as an expedient candle stand, and occasionally, as a weapon when things got really serious. Bayonets mounted on the weapon interfered with loading, so soldiers only attached them (fixed is the military term) when close combat was imminent.

Fighting illness in the ranks

One of the great tragedies of the Civil War is that even though the number of killed and wounded in Civil War battles was terribly high, more soldiers died from disease than combat wounds. Of all the Union soldiers who died in the war, nearly three out of every five died as a result of disease. Of Confederate soldiers who died, the number was nearly two of every three who fell victim to disease.

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The majority of deaths due to illness during the war were from typhoid fever, pneumonia, and dysentery. The remainder died from diarrhea, malaria, and tuberculosis. Early in the war, recruits came from all over the country with no medical examinations and congregated in unsanitary camps. Anyone who has put a child in preschool or elementary school probably knows what happened next — the measles, mumps, chicken pox, and whooping cough, and a host of other contagious diseases swept through the troops. Without any immunity to these diseases, many soldiers were incapacitated for weeks; hundreds of others died. With no knowledge of bacteria or viruses, soldiers drank contaminated water, ate food that was often spoiled, and served as hosts for a variety of insect pests that carried disease. Their poor diets and constant exposure to the elements made soldiers more susceptible to disease. Once stricken, a sick soldier often got worse — colds rapidly turned into pneumonia. The state of medical knowledge at this time had no treatment for most of these diseases, and a soldier either recovered on his own or died. Illnesses in the ranks depleted the strength of both armies and had a terrible effect on morale.

Caring for the wounded

During the war, approximately 110,000 Union and 94,000 Confederate soldiers died of combat wounds. If wounded, a soldier who could still walk made his way to the rear to the field hospitals, usually a barn or large shed. Often even a slightly wounded man was assisted to the rear by several of his “friends,” who were looking for an excuse to avoid the front lines. Musicians, cooks, and skulkers rounded up from their hiding places carried the more seriously wounded to the rear on stretchers. Ambulance units that located and transported casualties later replaced these often-unreliable angels of mercy. The field hospital surgeons tried to stop bleeding and treated only the wounds they best knew how to deal with. Often this procedure meant, quite simply, amputation. The Minié ball, the most common rifle projectile in the war, was a large, slow-moving missile that caused a rather large wound. A wound anywhere other than in an arm or leg was almost always fatal, because the Civil War physician had neither the medical knowledge nor the capability to treat such wounds.

At the field hospital, the injured soldier was dosed with chloroform and put on an elevated flat surface, usually a door or table from a nearby farmhouse. The surgeons and their assistants could perform amputations quickly, piling the limbs into a ghastly heap nearby. (In fact, that was how many knew where to look for the field hospital — by the pile of arms and legs outside the building.) Wherever possible after surgery, the wounded were moved into houses, put on porches, or even laid out in backyards to await transportation (often nothing more than carts or wagons) to a hospital. Many men died of either shock or infection after an amputation because doctors had no knowledge of the germ theory of disease and had no concept of even the most rudimentary rules of hygiene (such as washing one’s hands and instruments before and after surgery). Bacterial infection was thus passed from one patient to another as the doctor treated them. Amazingly, a wounded soldier who had received an amputation still had a 75 percent chance of survival.

Prisoners of war

Early in the war, soldiers captured in battle were paroled or exchanged. A prisoner who was paroled pledged not to fight again and was released to go home, usually carrying a piece of paper that reflected his status. After 1863, prisoners were held until an exchange could be arranged, usually a one-for-one arrangement. After 1864, no more exchanges were made, primarily because the Union discovered that exchanges served only to replenish the ranks of the Confederate army. The Union, with sufficient manpower to draw on, benefited little from exchanges. Therefore, the iron logic of war condemned thousands of men, North and South, to a sad fate. The North had 220,000 Confederate prisoners; over 26,000 died. The South had 127,000 Union prisoners; 22,000 died. The prisoners of the Civil War were not intentionally starved and abused as part of an ongoing conflict of ideologies, such as you can see in the present day. Tragically, many Northerners died of neglect, mismanagement, and ignorance at Confederate prisons such as Andersonville, Libby Prison, and Belle Isle; many Southerners died at Johnson’s Island, Camp Douglas, and Rock Island for the same reasons.

Women’s Roles in the Civil War

The primary domain of women in the years prior to the war remained in the home. However, changes were in the offing, especially in the North, where women took an active role in the antislavery movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a United States delegate to a world conference on antislavery in 1840. She was also a prominent leader of the movement agitating for equal rights. Dorothea Dix and other women became prominent in a number of social reform movements. The war would allow greater freedom and new roles for women, a process that has continued to this day.

The overwhelming number of casualties produced by the great battles of the war, as well as disease from crowded and unhealthy camp conditions, offered an opportunity for women to assist in helping return the sick and wounded back to active service. Far from their families and their communities, the sick and wounded faced a terrible burden. Women volunteered at all levels, responding to the overwhelming need. Catholic nuns also came to the aid of suffering Union and Confederate soldiers. Oftentimes kindness was all they could offer. Women cooked food, washed clothing and linen, wrote letters for patients, sang, decorated the wards, and comforted the dying. Northern women supported the war effort through the U.S. Sanitary Commission, which distributed food, clothing, and medicine to wounded soldiers. Men and women of the Commission visited army camps to instruct in the proper methods of disposing of waste and protecting sources of drinking water.

Women, both Black and White, could be found serving in various ways in Confederate hospitals. In Richmond, which held the largest and greatest number of hospitals in the Confederacy, women filled most of the nurse and administrator positions because of the shortage of men outside the army. Two hospitals — Chimborazo (8,000 beds) and Jackson (6,000 beds) — were perhaps the largest facilities of their kind in North America. Shortages of food and medicine also hampered efforts and made patients recovery even more difficult. Although the names of most of these women have been lost to history, there are a few who are famous. Kate Cunningham, a 27-year-old woman, traveled from Mobile to Corinth to help wounded Confederate soldiers after the Battle of Shiloh. Mary Ann Bickerdyke, known as “Mother” Bickerdyke to Union soldiers, became a famous army nurse and hospital administrator as well as a favorite of General Sherman. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was the most famous woman nurse of the war. She worked at many hospitals bringing medicines and supplies. She actually helped recover casualties from the Antietam battlefield during the fight and President Lincoln later appointed her to assist in identifying missing Union soldiers in the South.

Refugees and starvation

Because nearly all White men were in the army, Southern women took on the responsibilities of not only maintaining the farms and plantations, but also maintaining the national morale. Women were often the most vocal patriots and stirred religious efforts to purify Southern culture of its vices through prayer and fasting so that victory for the Confederacy would be assured.

As the war went on, many Southern families became refugees; as Northern troops approached, slaves often left the farms to seek freedom or to search for relatives. Food shortages and impossibly high prices led to sickness, despair, and a great weariness. By 1865, the women who had sustained the troops in the field for so long and maintained the nation’s morale and hope now were writing letters to their men that described their destitute situations, their starvation, their sickness, and that asked them to come home. Soldiers deserted the army by the thousands in those final months, leading directly to the South’s rapid defeat in the first months of 1865. In one month in the winter of 1864, for example, Lee lost 8 percent of his army’s strength due to desertion. White Southern women and Black female slaves often had no common bonds during the war. A woman living in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley recalled how, in 1863, two of her runaway slaves returned with Union cavalry to free a slave woman and her children still on the farm. The Yankees told the slave that she could take anything from the farm with her. The only possession she wanted to take away with her, the newly liberated woman said to the soldiers, was herself.

Spying for the North and South

Women served important roles as collectors of valuable intelligence information for both armies. As noncombatants, they were free to travel between the lines, making observations and reporting to military officers. Many became famous for their exploits. Here are some stories from three of the most well known spies of the Civil War:

Mary Elizabeth Bowser: Mary Elizabeth Bowser was a former slave educated in Philadelphia before the war at the insistence of her former master’s abolitionist daughter, Elizabeth Van Lew. Van Lew remained in Richmond during the war, and passed information to Union spies. Late in the war, she recruited Bowser to help her by having her obtain a job as a servant in President Davis’s residence, known as the Confederate White House. She reported to Van Lew what she had overheard in meetings or read from dispatches at the president’s desk. (He never thought to hide these papers because slaves were not supposed to be able to read or write.) This information ended up in the hands of General Grant. Although aware that the Union army seemed to know what he was thinking, Jefferson Davis never discovered the spy in his own house.

Belle Boyd: Belle Boyd spied for the Confederacy in the Shenandoah Valley, passing important information on enemy troop movements to Stonewall Jackson during his Valley Campaign. Both in 1862 and in 1863, she was arrested for carrying letters and papers of value to the Confederacy across enemy lines, spending time in a Union prison after each arrest. Exiled by the Union government, she fled to England. See Figure 26-3.

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Rose O’Neal Greenhow: Rose O’Neal Greenhow, a society girl from Maryland, was well known in Washington before the war. During the war, she used her Washington connections to collect valuable information that she passed to General Beauregard just before the first battle of Bull Run. Imprisoned twice for her activities, Greenhow continued to smuggle information out of Washington. She was exiled to the Confederacy in 1863 after her second prison term. Shortly thereafter, she appeared in Great Britain and France to seek support for Confederate independence. In 1864, she attempted to return to the Confederacy on a British blockade-runner. Chased by a Union gunboat as they approached Wilmington, North Carolina, the blockade runner struck a shoal. Fearing capture, Greenhow attempted to reach land in a small boat. The boat capsized in rough seas and she was drowned. Her body was recovered, and she was buried with full military honors in Wilmington.

The African-American Contribution

Frederick Douglass, a former slave who became one of the most eloquent spokesmen for African Americans, once said that after a Black man wore the uniform of his country, no power on earth could deny his right to citizenship. Many African Americans found the war to be their ticket to freedom. Former slaves enlisted in the Union army to earn their citizenship and prove their worth. Likewise, slaves and free Blacks in the South served many critical roles in supporting the war effort. Some served willingly, others did not, but their efforts kept the Confederacy alive for four years.

Union: The U.S. Colored Troops

After the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, Congress authorized African Americans to enlist in the army (see Figure 26-4). Over 160 units were formed, and about 180,000 African Americans served in the Union army during the war, a number representing nearly 10 percent of the entire Union army’s strength. The enlistees were segregated from White troops and White officers led the units. Until 1864, Black soldiers were paid less than White troops. There was widespread prejudice against the ability of African-American soldiers to fight. As a result, many units were shipped off to relatively quiet areas. But in numerous small battles in Missouri, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, between 1862 and 1863, the newly raised regiments proved their worth in battle, gaining a reputation for determination and courage. The 54th Massachusetts is probably the best-known African-American unit. Its participation in the attack on Fort Wagner, South Carolina, in 1863 has become legendary. Although the attack failed, and the 54th lost half its men, the unit’s heroic assault attracted widespread admiration in the North. In the last two years of the war, African-American units became more visible and fought with distinction in Grant’s Virginia Campaign. As a testimony to their important contribution to the Union victory, 16 African Americans won the Medal of Honor. Because they were often given the toughest assignments in battle, their casualties were heavy. About 32,000 African Americans enrolled in the army died in combat or from disease.

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Black Confederates

Estimates state that between 60,000 and 90,000 African Americans served with the Confederacy in various capacities. The contributions of African Americans to the South’s war effort were inestimable. Over 90 percent of the coal miners in Virginia were African American; Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond employed 1,200 African-American laborers, representing over half its work force. Thousands of African Americans also built fortifications, served as teamsters, grew crops, worked in factories, and fought in the armies alongside White Confederate soldiers. Free Blacks in Louisiana joined the Confederate army and others served in state militia units. One of these soldiers, Charles F. Lutz, fought in the Valley Campaign, at Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. He was captured twice and paroled each time, but returned to the army of northern Virginia. Other African-American soldiers like Lutz served with Stonewall Jackson and fought at Antietam. In 1861, Tennessee accepted into state service Black volunteers. In 1862, Alabama authorized Black militia units. In 1864, General Patrick Cleburne and other Confederate officers proposed the idea of enlisting slaves to serve in the Confederate army. Those slaves who volunteered would win their freedom at the end of their enlistment. By 1865, with defeat all but a reality, and finally willing to accept a nearly revolutionary way of thinking about the status of slaves, the Confederate Congress in March passed a measure authorizing the formation of African-American units to fight for the Confederacy. By the time President Davis signed it into law in March, the few African-American companies that were raised never saw battle — the war ended in April.

Discovering the American Indians

The Cherokee nation prior to the Civil War was considered to be a separate nation within the United States. Like other parts of the nation, it too displayed divided loyalties. American Indians (including Stand Watie) owned slaves for the same reasons White Southerners did, although the status of slaves in the Indian territories was different than in the Southern states; usually slave and American Indian master enjoyed a more equal social relationship. Many American Indians feared U.S. government policies toward them and turned to the Confederacy as a means to protect their land. Others resisted Confederate entreaties and supported the Union occupation of much of Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma). There were three regiments of infantry to defend the territory against Confederate incursions. They fought in several small engagements in Missouri and Arkansas. See Figure 26-5.

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Stand Watie (see Figure 26-6) was a Cherokee Indian and a member of the tribal council. When the war began, he joined the Confederacy and became a Colonel. He raised a cavalry regiment of 3,000 other Cherokees. At the battle of Pea Ridge in Arkansas, March 7–8, 1862, Watie’s unit captured a Union artillery battery. Throughout the war Watie’s unit, composed of Cherokees, Osage, Seminoles, and Creeks, played constant havoc with Union supply lines. He was promoted to Brigadier General in 1864 and was the last Confederate officer to surrender, 23 June 1865. Other American Indian tribes, including the Choctaw and Chickasaw, joined mounted units. Altogether, American Indians contributed 11 regiments and 8 battalions of cavalry to the Confederacy.

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Ely Parker was an Iroquois leader, a member of the New York state militia, and supervised government construction projects throughout the Midwest. In 1860, he met Ulysses Grant, who became a life-long friend. When the war began, he volunteered to raise a regiment of Iroquois to fight for the Union. New York’s governor rejected his offer. Attempting to join the army, he finally succeeded when Grant stood before Vicksburg. Grant needed engineering expertise and sought out his friend. His engineering skills brought him acclaim and in 1864, he had become a member of Grant’s personal staff. When Lee and Grant met at Appomattox, Grant selected Parker to draft the surrender papers because of his penmanship and his elegant writing style. He served on Grant’s staff until 1869, achieving the rank of Brigadier General. When Grant became president, he served as the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.