Being a Soldier in the Civil War
You will be re-creating history, using Easy Simulations: Civil War (Bailey, 2008) and your imagination to experience what it was like to be a soldier during the Civil War. You will be taking on the role of a citizen in that period and facing the same decisions that those people faced. The decision you make will determine whether you survive the bloodiest conflict in American history or end up in a shallow grade on a war-torn battlefield.
At the commencement of the war there was in vogue an order from the War Department prohibiting the enlistment of any into the army who was not in stature at least Five feet and Six inches in height. I was short by just One Half Inch . . . and the fact caused me many anxious hours. [But when my company was mustered in], with a brick in my hand I fell into the rear rank, not at the end but near it [with] a man on my right and another on my left. The brick was under my heels but buried in the straw out of sight. This made me two inches higher when standing on my tiptoes: made me up to the required standard. —W. H. H. Barker, volunteer from Iowa
At the beginning of the Civil War, men from both sides were eager to enlist in the military. They believed that the war would be short. This was a chance for glory and adventure, and if they didn’t volunteer, they would miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime. Families encouraged their young men to volunteer for the army, and young women like Virginian Fannie Beers felt that “the Confederate gray [uniform] was a thing of beauty, the outer garb of true and noble souls. Every man who wore it became ennobled in the eyes of every woman.” In the North it was the same story. “All of the girls came up to see us sworn in. We had fine times that day,” wrote Jason L. Ellis, a volunteer with the 18th Iowa Infantry.
The men from both North and South who volunteered to join the army were not professional soldiers. They were farmers, lawyers, and shopkeepers. The Union volunteers were nicknamed Billy Yank by the Southerners, and the Confederate soldiers were called Johnny Reb by the Northerners. By the end of the war, soldiers serving in the armies of the North and South ranged in age from 10 to 73 years. They were all Americans willing to die for their country.
The soldiers of the South had some advantages over their Northern counterparts. Most of the soldiers from the South lived in the country and knew how to shoot, ride a horse, and live in the wild. Many of the Northern soldiers lived in the cities and worked in factories. They didn’t know how to shoot a gun. However, the Union soldiers were much better supplied than the Confederate soldiers. Many Southern soldiers fought without shoes or boots, even in winter! The factories of the North could furnish more provisions and make better weapons. Most important, the North could recruit more men into the army than could the Confederacy.
Once a man joined the army, he quickly learned that a soldier’s life is not one of grand adventure, but of hard work, followed by periods of mind-numbing boredom and interrupted by moments of sheer terror. A Union volunteer, Warren Lee Goss, wrote, “It takes a raw recruit some time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey. I acquired it at last, in humility and mud, but it was tough.” The Civil War soldier marched into battle elbow-to-elbow with his fellow soldiers and, as the soldiers around him fell from enemy fire, he would step into their place and keep marching toward the enemy. This kind of discipline under fire was an essential part of a soldier’s basic training, which included learning to shoot, maneuver on a battlefield, dig trenches, care for each others’ injuries, and many other soldiering skills. Pennsylvania volunteer Oliver Wilcox Norton describes how all of these skills were learned by new soldiers: “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. Between drills, we drill, and sometimes stop to eat a little and have roll call.”
After the soldiers were trained, things became much worse as they went off “to see the elephant,” a popular phrase at the time that meant “to be in a real battle.” The fresh food that they enjoyed at basic training was replaced by salt horse—a slang term for beef so heavily salted it was said to last for two years without rotting—and desiccated vegetables—slabs of heavily peppered dried vegetables, which were broken into chunks and tossed into boiling water to make a kind of soup. The most infamous of all the provisions that a Civil War soldier endured was hard tack—a simple flour-and-water biscuit baked to the consistency of concrete.
Of course, a soldier’s purpose is to fight and defeat the enemy. The average Civil War soldier, if he lived long enough, saw a great deal of fighting. A private in the 20th Maine gave a vivid account of the sounds of battle: “The air was filled with a medley of sounds, shouts, cheers, commands, oaths, the sharp report of rifles, the hissing shot, groans and prayers.” It wasn’t until someone was trying to kill you that you knew how you would react under fire. Private Oliver Norton of the 83rd Pennsylvania watched his friends dying around him in battle and wrote, “I snatched up a gun from the hands of a man who was shot through the head. Then I jumped over dead men with as little feeling as I would over a log. The feeling that was uppermost in my mind was a desire to kill as many rebels as I could. The loss of comrades maddened me.”
Whether or not one survived battle was as much a matter of luck as it was skill. If one was not killed outright on the battlefield, as were more than 200,000 soldiers, then he might very well be one of over 400,000 who died of either infections or disease.
Battlefield medicine was crude by today’s standards. Thousands of maimed soldiers overwhelmed the few doctors who tried to care for the injured. Amputations were a very common way to deal with limbs that had been mangled by soft lead bullets and cannon balls. In addition, lack of proper hygiene—for example, doctors dropping surgical instruments and then wiping them off on their pants before continuing the operation—led to many instances of fatal infections.
Diseases were also a major killer of soldiers. As in any war, lack of clean water to drink and decent food to eat led to diseases like dysentery and typhoid fever. Infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, measles, small pox, and others, killed thousands of soldiers. Entire regiments were unfit for battle because of diseases running rampant through their camps. Jason Ellis, one of the soldiers quoted earlier, survived two skirmishes and a major battle without a scratch only to die from a disease in 1863.
Soldiers who survived The War Between the States returned home and tried to rebuild their lives back in the “real world.” Confederate General John C. Breckinridge remarked, “I have asked myself more than once tonight: ‘Are you the same man who stood gazing down on the faces of the dead on that awful battlefield; the soldiers lying there . . . with their eyes wide open? Is this the same world?’”
At the commencement of the war there was in vogue an order from the War Department prohibiting the enlistment of any into the army who was not in stature at least Five feet and Six inches in height. I was short by just One Half Inch . . . and the fact caused me many anxious hours. [But when my company was mustered in], with a brick in my hand I fell into the rear rank, not at the end but near it [with] a man on my right and another on my left. The brick was under my heels but buried in the straw out of sight. This made me two inches higher when standing on my tiptoes: made me up to the required standard. —W. H. H. Barker, volunteer from Iowa
At the beginning of the Civil War, men from both sides were eager to enlist in the military. They believed that the war would be short. This was a chance for glory and adventure, and if they didn’t volunteer, they would miss out on the opportunity of a lifetime. Families encouraged their young men to volunteer for the army, and young women like Virginian Fannie Beers felt that “the Confederate gray [uniform] was a thing of beauty, the outer garb of true and noble souls. Every man who wore it became ennobled in the eyes of every woman.” In the North it was the same story. “All of the girls came up to see us sworn in. We had fine times that day,” wrote Jason L. Ellis, a volunteer with the 18th Iowa Infantry.
The men from both North and South who volunteered to join the army were not professional soldiers. They were farmers, lawyers, and shopkeepers. The Union volunteers were nicknamed Billy Yank by the Southerners, and the Confederate soldiers were called Johnny Reb by the Northerners. By the end of the war, soldiers serving in the armies of the North and South ranged in age from 10 to 73 years. They were all Americans willing to die for their country.
The soldiers of the South had some advantages over their Northern counterparts. Most of the soldiers from the South lived in the country and knew how to shoot, ride a horse, and live in the wild. Many of the Northern soldiers lived in the cities and worked in factories. They didn’t know how to shoot a gun. However, the Union soldiers were much better supplied than the Confederate soldiers. Many Southern soldiers fought without shoes or boots, even in winter! The factories of the North could furnish more provisions and make better weapons. Most important, the North could recruit more men into the army than could the Confederacy.
Once a man joined the army, he quickly learned that a soldier’s life is not one of grand adventure, but of hard work, followed by periods of mind-numbing boredom and interrupted by moments of sheer terror. A Union volunteer, Warren Lee Goss, wrote, “It takes a raw recruit some time to learn that he is not to think or suggest, but obey. I acquired it at last, in humility and mud, but it was tough.” The Civil War soldier marched into battle elbow-to-elbow with his fellow soldiers and, as the soldiers around him fell from enemy fire, he would step into their place and keep marching toward the enemy. This kind of discipline under fire was an essential part of a soldier’s basic training, which included learning to shoot, maneuver on a battlefield, dig trenches, care for each others’ injuries, and many other soldiering skills. Pennsylvania volunteer Oliver Wilcox Norton describes how all of these skills were learned by new soldiers: “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. Between drills, we drill, and sometimes stop to eat a little and have roll call.”
After the soldiers were trained, things became much worse as they went off “to see the elephant,” a popular phrase at the time that meant “to be in a real battle.” The fresh food that they enjoyed at basic training was replaced by salt horse—a slang term for beef so heavily salted it was said to last for two years without rotting—and desiccated vegetables—slabs of heavily peppered dried vegetables, which were broken into chunks and tossed into boiling water to make a kind of soup. The most infamous of all the provisions that a Civil War soldier endured was hard tack—a simple flour-and-water biscuit baked to the consistency of concrete.
Of course, a soldier’s purpose is to fight and defeat the enemy. The average Civil War soldier, if he lived long enough, saw a great deal of fighting. A private in the 20th Maine gave a vivid account of the sounds of battle: “The air was filled with a medley of sounds, shouts, cheers, commands, oaths, the sharp report of rifles, the hissing shot, groans and prayers.” It wasn’t until someone was trying to kill you that you knew how you would react under fire. Private Oliver Norton of the 83rd Pennsylvania watched his friends dying around him in battle and wrote, “I snatched up a gun from the hands of a man who was shot through the head. Then I jumped over dead men with as little feeling as I would over a log. The feeling that was uppermost in my mind was a desire to kill as many rebels as I could. The loss of comrades maddened me.”
Whether or not one survived battle was as much a matter of luck as it was skill. If one was not killed outright on the battlefield, as were more than 200,000 soldiers, then he might very well be one of over 400,000 who died of either infections or disease.
Battlefield medicine was crude by today’s standards. Thousands of maimed soldiers overwhelmed the few doctors who tried to care for the injured. Amputations were a very common way to deal with limbs that had been mangled by soft lead bullets and cannon balls. In addition, lack of proper hygiene—for example, doctors dropping surgical instruments and then wiping them off on their pants before continuing the operation—led to many instances of fatal infections.
Diseases were also a major killer of soldiers. As in any war, lack of clean water to drink and decent food to eat led to diseases like dysentery and typhoid fever. Infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, measles, small pox, and others, killed thousands of soldiers. Entire regiments were unfit for battle because of diseases running rampant through their camps. Jason Ellis, one of the soldiers quoted earlier, survived two skirmishes and a major battle without a scratch only to die from a disease in 1863.
Soldiers who survived The War Between the States returned home and tried to rebuild their lives back in the “real world.” Confederate General John C. Breckinridge remarked, “I have asked myself more than once tonight: ‘Are you the same man who stood gazing down on the faces of the dead on that awful battlefield; the soldiers lying there . . . with their eyes wide open? Is this the same world?’”
https://youtu.be/FxnDnxUwl4Y