Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

Then, as to rations, their hardtack never held out, and they were ever on the alert to borrow. It mattered not how great the scarcity, real or anticipated, they could not provide for a contingency, and their neighbors in the same squad were mean and avaricious—so the beats said—if they would not give of their husbanded resources to these profligate, improvident comrades. But this class did not stop at borrowing hardtack. They were not all of them particular, and when hardtack could not be spared they would get along with coffee or sugar or salt pork; or, if they could borrow a dollar, “just for a day or two,” they would then repay it surely, because several letters from their friends at home, each one containing money, were already overdue. People in civil life think they know all about the imperfections of the United States postal service, and tell of their letters and papers lost, miscarried, or in some way delayed, with much pedantry; but they have yet to learn the A B C of its imperfections, and no one that I know of is so competent to teach them as certain of the Union soldiers. I could have produced men in 1862-5, yes—I can now—who lost more letters in one year, three out of every four of which contained considerable sums of money, than any postmaster-general yet appointed is willing to admit have been lost since the establishment of a mail service. This, remember, the loss of one man; and when it is multiplied by the number of men just like him that were to be found, not in one army alone but in all the armies of the Union, a special reason is obvious why the government should be liberal in its dealings with the old soldier.

In this connection I am reminded of another interesting feature of army experience, which is of some historical value. It was this: whenever the troops were paid off a very large majority of them wished to send the most of their pay home to their families or their friends for safe keeping. Of course there was some risk attending the sending of it in the mails. To obviate this risk an “allotment” plan was adopted by means of which when the troops were visited by the paymaster, on signing a roll prepared for that purpose, so much of their pay as they wished was allotted or assigned by the soldiers to whomsoever they designated at the North. To illustrate: John Smith had four months’ pay due him at the rate of $13 a month. He decided to allot $10 per month of this to his wife at Plymouth, Mass.; so the paymaster pays him $12, and the remaining $40 is paid to his wife by check in Plymouth, without any further action on the part of John.

This plan was a great convenience to both the soldiers and their families. In this division of his income the calculation of the soldier was to save out enough for himself to pay all incidental expenses of camp life, such as washing, tobacco, newspapers, pies and biscuits, bought of “Aunty,” and cheese and cakes of the sutler. But in spite of his nice calculations the rule was that the larger part of the money allotted home was returned, by request of the sender, in small amounts of a dollar or the fraction of a dollar. I have previously stated that at that time silver had gone out of use, it being only to be had by paying the premium on it, just as on gold, and so to take its place the government issued what was generally known as scrip, being paper currency of the denominations of fifty, twenty-five, ten, five, and, later, fifteen and three-cent pieces, some of which are still in circulation. They were a great convenience to the soldiers and their friends. But to resume:—

If the statements made by these beats as to the amount of money they had sent for and were expecting were to be believed they must not only have sent for their full allotment, but have drawn liberally on their home credit or the charity of their friends besides. In truth, however, the genuine beat never intended to return borrowed money. It is currently believed by outsiders that the soldiers who stood shoulder to shoulder battling for the Union, sharing the same exposures, the same shelter, the same mess would ever afterwards be likely to stand steadfastly by one another. The organization of the Grand Army of the Republic seems to strengthen such an opinion, yet human nature remains pretty much the same in all situations. If a man was a shirk or a thief or a beat or a coward or a worthless scoundrel generally in the army, it was because he had been educated to it before he enlisted. The leopard cannot change his spots nor the Ethiopian his skin. It will therefore create no great surprise when I remark that a large amount of money borrowed by one soldier of another has never been repaid; and such is the lack of honesty and manliness on the part of these men that they can meet the old comrades of whom in those trying war days they borrowed one, two, five, or ten dollars, and in some cases more, without so much as a blush or betraying in any manner the slightest recognition of their long standing obligation. Some are so worthless and brazen-faced even as to ask the same victims for more at this late day.

One favorite dodge of the beat was to have the corporal arouse him twice or three times before he would finally get out of his bunk; and then he would prepare to go out at a snail’s pace. Once on his beat, his next dodge was to manœuvre so as to have the corporal of his relief do the most of his duty for him; for hardly would he have been posted before the corporal must be summoned, the beat having been seized with a desire to go to the company sink. That is good for half an hour out of the corporal at least. At last the dodger reappears moving at a slow pace, and wearing the appearance of a man suffering for his discharge from service. He retails his woes to the corporal, as he resumes his equipments, in a most doleful strain. But the corporal is in no mood to listen after his long wait, and hastily directs his steps towards the guard-tent.

He is not allowed to remain there long, however, ere a summons reaches him from the same post, to which he responds with excusable ill-humor and mutterings at the duplicity of the guardsman in question. This time the patient has happened to think of some medicine at his tent which will be of benefit to him. Of course the corporal is anxious enough to have him healed, and so he again assumes the duties of the post for the shirk, who does not reappear until his last hour of duty is well on its second quarter, feigning in excuse that he could not find his own panacea and so was obliged to go elsewhere. Thus in one way and another, by using the kind offices of his messmates together with those of the corporal, he would manage to get out of at least two-thirds of his guard duty.

THE RHEUMATIC DODGER.

After the battle of Fredericksburg a soldier belonging to a gallant regiment in Burnside’s corps, whose courage had evidently been put to a sore test in the above engagement, resorted to the rheumatic dodge to secure his discharge. He responded daily to sick call, pitifully warped out of shape, was prescribed for, but all to no avail. One leg was drawn up so that, apparently, he could not use it, and groans indicative of excruciating agony escaped him at studied intervals and on suitable occasions. So his case went on for six weeks, till at last the surgeon recommended his discharge. It was approved at regimental, brigade, and division headquarters, and had reached corps headquarters when the corps was ordered to Kentucky. At Covington the party having the supposed invalid in charge gained access in some manner to a barrel of whiskey. Not being a temperance man, the dodger was thrown off his guard by this spiritual bonanza, and, taking his turn at the straw, for which entry had been made into the barrel, he was soon as sprightly on both legs as ever. In this condition his colonel found him. Of course his discharge was recalled from corps headquarters, and the way of this transgressor was made hard for months afterwards.

There was another field in which the beat played an interesting part. I use played with a double significance, for he never worked if he could avoid it. It was when a detail of men was made to do some line of fatigue duty, by which is meant all the labors of the service distinct from strict military duty, such as the “policing” or clearing up of camp, procuring wood and water for the company, digging and fitting up of sinks (the water-closets of the army), and, in addition to these duties, in cavalry and artillery, procuring grain and forage for the horses. It was a sad fate to befall a good duty soldier to get on to a detail to procure wood where every second or third man was a shirk or beat; for while they must needs bear the appearance of doing something, they were really in the way of those who could work and were willing to. Many of these shirkers would waste a great deal of time and breath maligning the government or their officers for requiring them to do such work, indignantly declaring that “they enlisted to fight and not to chop wood or dig sinks.” But it was noticeable that when the fight came on, if any of these heroes got into it, they then appeared just as willing to bind themselves by contract to cut all the wood in Virginia, if they could only be let go just that once. These were the men who were “invincible in peace and invisible in war,” as the late Senator Hill, of Georgia, once said. I may add here that, coming as the soldiers did from all avocations and stations in life, these details for fatigue often brought together men few of whom had any practical knowledge of the work in hand; so that aside from the shirks, who could work but would not, there were others who would but could not, at least intelligently. Still, the army was a great educator in many ways to men who cared to learn, and some of the most ignorant became by force of circumstances quite expert, in time, in channels hitherto untraversed by them.