A Study of Army Camp Life during American Revolution

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BY MARY HAZEL SNUFF B. S. North-Western College, 1917. THESIS Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS IN HISTORY IN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 1918

The object of this study is to produce a picture of the private soldier of the American Revolution as he lived, ate, was punished, played, and worshiped in the army camp. Drawing that picture not only from the standpoint of the continental congress, the body which made the rules and regulations for governing the army, or from the officer's view point as they issued orders from headquarters rather just a study of the soldier himself in the camp conditions and his reaction to them. It was easy for congress to determine the rations or for the commander-in-chief to issue orders about housing conditions and sanitation, but the opportunities for obeying those orders were not always the best. It is just that fact, not what was intended, but what happened, that is to be discussed.
The material has been gathered mostly from letters, journals, orderly books, and diaries of the officers and privates, written while in camp. The difficulty confronted has been to get the diaries of the private soldier. They have either not been published or if they have been published they have been edited in such a way as to make them useless for a study of social conditions in camp, the emphasis having been placed on the military operations and tactics rather than the every day incidents in the soldier's life.
The soldier has been studied after he went into camp. Little has been said about the conditions which led to the war or the conditions as they were before the struggle began except as they are used to explain existing facts. It has been the plan in most of the chapters to give a brief resume of the plans made by congress or the commander-in-chief for the working out of that particular part of the organization, then to describe the conditions as they really were.