Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

When the general commanding an army had decided upon a plan of campaign, and the proper time came to put it in operation, he at once issued his orders to his subordinate commanders to have their commands ready to take their place in column at a given hour on a given day. These orders came down through the various corps, division, brigade, regimental, or battery headquarters to the rank and file, whose instructions given them on line would be to the effect that at the stated hour they were to be ready to start with three days’ rations in their haversacks (this was the usual quantity), the infantry to have forty rounds of ammunition in their cartridge-boxes. This latter quantity was very often exceeded. The Army of the Potomac went into the Wilderness having from eighty to a hundred rounds of ammunition to a man, stowed away in knapsacks, haversacks, or pockets, according to the space afforded, and six days’ rations similarly disposed of. When Hooker started on the Chancellorsville Campaign, eleven days’ rations were issued to the troops.

Sometimes marching orders came when least expected. I remember to have heard the long roll sounded one Saturday forenoon in the camp of the infantry that lay near us in the fall of ’63; it was October 10. Our guns were unlimbered for action just outside of camp where we had been lying several days utterly unsuspicious of danger. It was quite a surprise to us; and such Lee intended it to be, he having set out to put himself between our army and Washington. We were not attacked, but started to the rear a few hours afterwards.

Before the opening of the spring campaign a reasonable notice was generally given. There was one orderly from each brigade headquarters who almost infallibly brought marching orders. The men knew the nature of the tidings which he cantered up to regimental headquarters with under his belt. Very often they would good-naturedly rail at him as he rode into and out of camp, thus indicating their dislike of his errand; but the wise ones went directly to quarters and began to pack up.

PACKING UP.

When it was officially announced to the men on line at night that marching orders were received, and that at such an hour next morning tents would be struck and the men in place, equipped and provided as already stated, those men who had not already decided the question retired to their huts and took an account of stock in order to decide what to take and what to leave. As a soldier would lay out two articles on the bunk, of equally tender associations, one could seem to hear him murmur, with Gay,

“How happy could I be with either

Were t’other dear charmer away.”

as he endeavored to choose between them, knowing too well that both could not be taken. The “survival of the fittest” was the question, which received deeper and tenderer consideration here in one evening than Darwin has ever given it in the same time. Then, there was the overcoat and the woollen blanket which should be left? Perhaps he finally decided to try taking both along for a while. He will leave the dress-coat and wear the blouse. He has two changes of flannels. He will throw away those he has on, don a clean set and take a change with him. These flannels, by the way, if they were what he drew from the government stores, were often as rough to the skin as coarse sand-paper, which they somewhat resembled in color.

From the head of his bunk he takes a collection of old letters which have accumulated during the winter. These he looks over one by one and commits to the flames with a sigh. Many of them are letters from home; some are from acquaintances. Possibly he read the Waverly Magazine, and may have carried on a correspondence with one or more of the many young women who advertised in it for a “soldier correspondent, who must not be over twenty,” with all the virtues namable. There was no man in my company—from old Graylocks, of nearly sixty, down to the callow “chicken” of seventeen—but what felt qualified to fill such a bill, “just for the fun of it, you know.” The young woman was generally “eighteen, of prepossessing appearance, good education, and would exchange photographs if desired.”