Since many scenes in my Civil War set romances, including the award winning novel, Confederate Rose, takes place in Civil War camps, I thought I’d share my research on the life of a American Civil War soldier.
To quote a Confederate soldier in one of his letters to his family, “If there is any place on God’s fair earth where wickedness ‘stalketh abroad in daylight’ it is in the army.”
Soldiers in both armies often faced boredom, fear, disease, mischief and even death.
Civil War army camps were, by regulation, laid out in a grid pattern. Officers quartered at the front end of the street, enlisted men at the rear. Camps were set up along battle lines. Each company displayed its colors outside of the tents. Mess tents, medical cabins and baggage trains were also lined up according to regulations.
Campgrounds, especially in the South, became horrible to live in when thick mud, due to rain, extended for long periods in spring and summer. Winter and fall were no better, since the mud turned to dust.
Troops slept in canvas tents in summer. Both sides used Sibley tents at the start of the war. Named for its inventor, Henry H. Sibley, this tent was a large cone of canvas, 18 feet in diameter, 12 feet tall. Its support was a center pole, with a circular opening on top for ventilation. It also contained a cone-shaped stove to provide heat in cold weather. This tent was designed to fit a dozen men in comfort, but the army assigned 20 men to each tent, cramming them in. When it rained or was cold, the top flap had to be closed and the air inside turned fetid. The men had little access to clean water for bathing, so the odors of so many unwashed bodies in so close a space was unbearable.
Later in the war, the Sibley was replaced by smaller tents. Federal armies liked the wedge tent. This was a six-foot length of canvas which draped over a horizontal ridgepole. The tent was staked to the ground on the sides. The ends had flaps that could be tied closed.
But the Confederate army faced more problems when canvas grew scarce in the South. Soldiers rigged open-air beds with piles of straw or leaves between two logs. When the weather turned cold, men built crude wood huts, using split logs for bunks with pine needles for cushioning.
Since next Monday is Memorial Day, I’ll revisit this subject to talk about how the soldier’s day was spent when not in battle.
For more info, visit these sites http://www.civilwarhome.com/camplife.htm http://www.civilwarhome.com/soldierslife.htm http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/14/notes-on-civil-war-camp/
Erin groaned. Her head and neck hurt like hell, and so did her nose. In fact, everything hurt. What had happened? She reached to the back of her head, where her fingers closed around a damp cloth. When she opened her eyes, a sharp pain knifed through her skull.
Katie O’Reilly tensed as she stared at the swift-running stream. Trees cast long shadows across the rushing water, and the air held a biting chill. Her stomach emitted a growl, protesting not having had anything to eat since she’d departed earlier that morning. She yanked the empty canteen’s cork to refill it before continuing the journey. As she neared the frigid water, her hands shook. Her mare, hitched to an oak tree, shook its mane and pawed the ground with the left hoof.
Sarah Emma Edmonds was born in New Brunswick, Canada in 1841. She grew up on a farm, so along with her sisters, she participated alongside her one brother to perform the hard physical work of farming. She tended to the animals, chopped wood, milked cows, planted and harvested. She also learned to ride horses, hunted and fished.
As Franklin Thompson, Sarah spent her first months of military service at the regimental hospital, serving as a “male” nurse. She then became postmaster and then a mail carrier.
