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The Civil War Soldier Podcast
Young recruit, you will be called out for roll Monday as you take your place as a member of the
Iron Brigade – the most celebrated, well known, and respected brigade of the entire conflict … and
the one with the highest percentage of casualties. You will all be members of the Union in
tomorrow’s day at camp.
Listen to the following description of life as a soldier in the Union army during the war between the
states. Your task will be to use this information as you annotate your Civil War Sensory Figure.
Some comparisons will be made to your counterparts in the South as well. You should get a good
idea about your daily existence, which was described as “99% boredom, 1% sheer terror”. You
can get an idea of the boredom in this podcast ... the terror may come Monday.
The first question is always … why did you sign up to fight in this war? Being from Wisconsin, you
don’t have to worry about invasion or defending your home, and most of you have little to no
contact with the concept of slavery? Your work on the “Why fight” assignment will answer this
question, and also give you an idea of why some of those boys in gray joined the Confederacy.
You will notice that some of the reasons are exactly the same … and some are quite different.
Conscription, or the draft, began in the South in 1862 and the North in 1863. Neither was very
popular, and drafted soldiers were usually worse than the enlisted men.
Are you average? The average Yank or Reb was a ‘white, native-born, farmer, protestant,
single,.’ He stood about 5 feet 8 inches tall and weighed about 143 pounds. Most soldiers were
between the ages of 18 and 39 with an average age just under 26. The oldest soldier was in his
80s before leaving due to disability … the youngest was 9. The legal age of entry was eighteen,
but that didn’t stop some clever enlistees. It turned out, at least in the North, that some under
aged boys would put a piece of paper with the number “18” on it and stick it in their shoe. When
asked at the recruiting station if he was “over eighteen”, the boy could honestly reply “yes”.
There is a rumor going around camp that some of our boys in blue (and their boys in gray) are
actually not boys .. and it’s true. There are a few women who disguise themselves as men and
serve on either side. They were not detected until they were injured or until after the war.
Most men on either side are native-born Americans. In the North, one out of four was a first or
second generation immigrant. There were 3 brigades of Cherokees, Choctaws, Chickasaws, and
Seminoles that fight for the Confederacy, while one brigade of Creeks enlisted in the Union army.
African Americans were allowed to enlist in the Union army in 1862 after President Lincoln issued
the Emancipation Proclamation, while the South will authorize the recruitment of 300,000 blacks
near the end of the war but faced a public outcry and never allowed them into battle.
The typical soldier on both sides had the same job as the average American – a small farmer.
Almost every other occupation in the country is represented in the forces of both sides, including
accountant, surveyor, locksmith, teacher, carpenter, shoemaker, blacksmith, painter, mason,
merchants, machinists, lawyers, dentists, and some southerners who simply stated their
profession as gentlemen.
If you are a typical soldier, you have little experience in listening to leaders and accepting
discipline. Most recruits “considered it degrading to give immediate and unquestioning obedience
to orders, and they had a way of wanting to debate things, or at least to have them explained,
before they acted. In the South a hot-blooded young private might challenge a company officer to
a duel if he felt that such a course was called for, and if the Northern regiments saw no duels, they
at least saw plenty of fist fights between officers and men. The whole concept of discipline was
foreign to the recruits of 1861, and many of them never did get the idea.
One reason why discipline was imperfect was the fact that company and regimental officers were
mostly either elected by the soldiers or appointed by the state governor for reasons of politics:
they either were, or wanted to be, personally liked by the men they commanded, and an officer
with political ambitions could see a postwar constituent in everybody in the ranks. Such men are
not likely to bear down very hard, and if they did the privates were not likely to take it very well.
There are four major types of units in both armies, each of which playing an important role in
battles. You have your engineering corps, which will make fortifications if needed, build bridges
where we need to cross rivers, and at times dig in trenches for long term combat. The second,
the Artillery, was made up of the cannoneers, those men that fired the big guns. We Federals
have a big advantage in artillery, partly because of our superior industrial supplies and partly
because, having larger armies, we can afford to use more batteries. On most fields we will have
many more guns than the Confederates on the opposing side.
We certainly do not have the advantage in the second type of unit – the cavalry. Southerners
outclass us in horse-mounted soldiers because of background and tradition. Cavalry in the war is
actually of secondary importance as far as fighting was concerned. It’s essential for scouting and
for screening an army, but as a combat arm it’s not as essential. Cavalry skirmish frequently with
other cavalry, and the skirmishes at times rise to the level of pitched battles, but it fought infantry
only very rarely. The press and back-home civilians love the horse mounted soldiers, but neither
infantry nor artillery admire it. The commonest infantry wisecrack of the war was the bitter
question: "Who ever saw a dead cavalryman?"
And then there is you – the infantry. As a common foot soldier, you will need to learn the skills of
marching, moving as a unit, loading your weapon, and firing on command. In intense fighting, you
will need to act as a well oiled machine, able to move to the left or right, turning on a pivot,
advance, retreat, and hold the line – at all costs. We will be working on some of those tactics
tomorrow in camp. The training you get in is designed to teach how to get from a marching
formation to a fighting formation. An immense amount of drill is needed, and few generals ever
considered that their men had had enough.
Camp life is not all that great, as you may already realize. "If there is any place on God's fair earth
where wickedness 'stalketh abroad in daylight' it is in the army," wrote a Confederate soldier in a
letter to his family back home. Your living arrangements aren’t the best. Officers lived better than
enlisted men, as they get their own living quarters (sometimes private homes) and their baggage
is carried by wagons. As an enlisted man, you have to carry all your belongings on your back –
30-40 pounds. You are issued half of a tent, and you will combine with another enlisted man to
make a full one.
Your life consists of tedious daily routines. Soldiers like you spend weeks and months at a time in
camp between engagements, even during active campaigning. When not in battle, which was at
least three quarters of the time, your day will probably begin at 5 A.M. in the summer and 6 A.M.
in the winter, when you are awakened by reveille. After the first sergeant takes roll call, it’s time for
breakfast and then preparation for their first of as many as five drill sessions during the day. Drill
sessions last approximately two hours each and, for most men, were exceptional exercises in
tedium. In these sessions, you will learn how to shoot their weapons and perform various
maneuvers. One soldier described his days in the army like this: "The first thing in the morning is
drill. Then drill, then drill again. Then drill, drill, a little more drill. Then drill, and lastly drill."
In the few intervals between drill, you and your fellow soldiers will clean the camp, build roads, dig
trenches for latrines, and gather wood for cooking and heating. Finding clean water is a constant
goal: the lack of drinkable water is a problem that leads to widespread disease in both armies.
At the outset of the war, the soldiers on both sides were relatively well-fed: the mandated daily
ration for a Federal soldier in 1861 included at least 20 ounces of fresh or salt beef, or 12 ounces
of salt pork, more than a pound of flour, and a vegetable, usually beans. Coffee, salt, vinegar, and
sugar were provided as well. Supplies become limited when armies are moving fast and supply
trains could not reach them in the field. When in the field, you will see little beef and few
vegetables; you will subsist for the most part on salt pork, dried beans, corn bread, and hardtack –
which you will get to sample tomorrow. Outbreaks of scurvy are common due to a frequent lack of
fresh fruits and vegetables. The bottom line – no one is getting fat in either army during the war.
By far, the most important staple in the minds of the soldiers is coffee. Men pound the beans
between rocks or crush them with the butts of their rifles to obtain grounds to brew the strong
drink. Although most Federals were well-supplied with coffee, the Confederates are often forced
to make do with substitutes made from peanuts, potatoes, peas, and chicory.
Attached to most armies is the sutler, a purveyor of all goods not issued by the army, including
tobacco, candy, tinned meats, shoelaces, patent medicines, fried pies, and newspapers. Sutlers
are known for their steep prices and shoddy goods, but soldiers desperate for cigarettes, sweets,
and news from home are willing to use their pay for these treats.
Boredom stalks both armies almost as much as does hunger. When not faced with the sheer
terror of battle, the days in camp tend to drag endlessly. When not drilling or standing guard, you
will read (if you they can), write letters to your their loved ones, and play any game you can
devise, including baseball, cards, boxing matches, and cockfights. Games of chance and the
exchange of money are popular on both sides. One competition involves racing lice or
cockroaches across a strip of canvas. A good gambler can send money home to help in the hard
times shared by many. Cards will usually be left behind before a battle, because no one wants to
meet their maker with a deck of cards on their person.
Individually and in groups, music and singing are common in the soldier's life whether in camp or
on the march. In camp, soldiers will often entertain themselves by singing and playing musical
instruments. Fife and drum corps or regimental bands often perform concerts for entertainment.
The arrival of mail plays large part in the soldier's life. For those who can write, letter writing was a
very common pastime. Not only is it a way to while away the time but, for most, it’s the only means
of contact with home and friends. . Letters from home are critical to boost soldier morale, although
there never seems to be enough news from home or about the war. Mail is uncensored, and
contains not only military information but also many personal feelings and words from the heart.
The most common pastime in camp was sitting around and talking, reminiscing of home, or
grumbling about circumstances.
Most army regulations prohibit the purchase of alcohol by enlisted men, and soldiers who violate
the rule are punished, but men on both sides find ways around it. Members of a Mississippi
company got a half a gallon of whisky past the camp guards by concealing it in a hollowed-out
watermelon; they then buried the melon beneath the floor of their tent and drank from it with a long
straw. If soldiers can’t buy liquor, they make it. One Union recipe called for "bark juice, tar-water,
turpentine, brown sugar, lamp oil, and alcohol."
Because of the desire for coffee and tobacco, fraternization between the two sides was common
during the war. Union and Confederate soldiers would often trade their goods, with Billy Yank
giving up some of his coffee for the desired tobacco of Johnny Reb. Sometimes men frpm each
side will meet overnight to play a serious game of poker and swap stories of the war.
DISEASE AND DEATH - When you fight, you are very likely to be hurt pretty badly; when you stay
in camp, you live under conditions that are very likely to make you sick; and in either case you
have almost no chance to get the kind of medical treatment which a generation or so later will find
routine. Both the Federal and Confederate governments do their best to provide proper medical
care for their soldiers, but even the best is not very good. This is nobody's fault, since there is
simply was no such thing as good medical care at the time.
Few medical men then know why wounds become infected or what causes disease; the treatment
of wounds and disease, consequently, range from the inadequate through the useless to the
downright harmful. The idea that a surgical dressing ought to be sterilized never enters anyone's
head; for that matter, no physician knows what the word "sterilized" means in such a connection. If
a surgeon's instruments are so much as rinsed off between operations at a field hospital, the case
is an exception.
In camp, diseases like typhoid, dysentery, and pneumonia are dreaded killers. No one really
understands what causes them, and no one can do much for them when they appear. Doctors
discovered that there was some connection between the cleanliness of a camp and the number of
men on sick call, but sanitation is still a rudimentary science, and if a water supply is not visibly
befouled and odorous, it was thought to be perfectly safe.
Well, that’s more than enough of a background of the life of soldier in the war … it’s your turn
Monday to feel what it’s like to drill, drill, drill, eat hardtack, and hopefully survive an engagement
as a Civil War soldier. DO NOT FORGET YOUR ENLISTMENT PAPERS!