The Federal private received $13 per month and a clothing allowance of $42 annually. Customarily, his uniform was dark blue and consisted of a kepi (a cap that slants toward the front), heavy wool coat, and lighter colored trousers. His prescribed equipment included rifle, ammunition, knapsack, blanket, haversack, canteen, bayonet, and cartridge box. The Federal lived mostly in a tent, cooked his meals with his messmates, and was personally responsible for the good condition of his equipment.
His Confederate counterpart was not so well provided. In addition to his musket, he normally carried a blanket slung over one shoulder, canteen, knife, and cartridge box. Gray was the color of the official Confederate uniform. However, few of the soldiers were uniformly clad after the first months of service. Many wore instead clothing taken from dead or captured Federals, or made at home and dyed in a solution of walnut hulls. The home-dyed uniform was light brown, or “butternut”, in color. Few tents existed in Confederate armies. Southern soldiers thus became accustomed to camping in the open. The Confederate private received $11 monthly until 1864, when his pay was raised to $18 because of widespread Southern inflation.
Photographer Timothy O’Sullivan captured this scene near Rappahannock Station, Va., in March, 1864. In the foreground is a sutler’s tent. The fence marks the stockade of the 50th New York Engineers.
The Federal soldier received much better rations than did the Confederate. His bread was a thick cracker called “hardtack”, and many jokes were made over its toughness. The Union soldier also received meat, dried vegetables, coffee, sugar, and salt. The Confederate soldier, unable to get coffee because of the blockade, learned to use beans, rye, parched corn, and even acorns as substitutes. Rarely did Southern troops have ample food. Personal accounts by Confederates often reveal pitiful instances of widespread malnutrition in the ranks.
For recreation, each soldier was left to his own devices. Letter-writing, reading, singing, card-playing, and sleeping were the favorite pastimes of troops in camp. In winter men on both sides constructed huts of logs and mud, or piled dirt against the sides of their tents as insulation from the cold. Reveille normally sounded at 5 a.m. in summer and 6 a.m. in winter. “Taps”, a melody first played in 1862, generally came between 10 and 11 p.m.
Fighting in the Civil War was generally savage, and guerrillas on both sides often killed in cold blood. Yet when opposing armies were camped close to one another, it was not at all uncommon for blue and gray pickets to establish informal truces, swap newspapers, tobacco, and coffee, and even to camp together. Sometimes this fraternization might last through an entire winter. Even in battle, many soldiers on both sides displayed great compassion—even to the extent of risking their lives in order to help a stricken foe. Sergeant Richard Kirkland of South Carolina was so overcome at the mounting Federal casualties during the battle of Fredericksburg that he crawled out upon the battlefield and voluntarily gave aid to dozens of wounded Northerners.
Noted Civil War artist Edwin Forbes sketched this scene of Federal and Confederate pickets between the lines swapping tobacco and coffee during a truce only they have declared.
Yet army life of the 1860’s had many and severe hardships. Improper diet and insanitary conditions often prostrated half of a unit’s membership. Since filth abounded in every army, a soldier who did not have his share of lice and fleas was a rare exception. Moreover, the fact that a majority of the soldiers were from rural communities made them very susceptible to such “city sicknesses” as measles, chicken pox, and small pox. The death rate from these diseases were very high. In the Federal armies, sickness and disease accounted for 7 of every 10 deaths. One authority has estimated that among the Confederates three men perished from disease for every man killed in battle. Small wonder that a Civil War soldier once wrote his family from camp: “It scares a man to death to get sick down here.”