Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

STRAPPED TO A STICK.

At the beginning of the war many generals were very fearful lest some of the acts of the common soldier should give offence to the Southern people. This encouraged the latter to report every chicken lost, every bee-hive borrowed, every rail burnt, to headquarters, and subordinates were required to institute the most thorough search for evidence that should lead to the detection and punishment of the culprits, besides requiring them to make full restitution of the value of the property taken. Our government and its leading officers, military and civil, seemed at that time to stand hat in hand apologizing to the South for invading its sacred territory, and almost appearing to want only a proper pretext to retire honorably from the conflict. But by the time that the Peninsular Campaign was brought to a close this kid-glove handling of the enemy had come to an end, and the wandering shote, the hen-roosts, the Virginia fence and the straw stack came to be regarded in a sense as perquisites of the Union army. Punishments for appropriating them after this time were much rarer, and the difficulty of finding the culprits increased, as the officers were becoming judiciously near-sighted.

DRUMMING OUT OF CAMP.

Drumming out of camp was a punishment administered for cowardice. Whenever a man’s courage gave out in the face of the enemy, at the earliest opportunity after the battle, he was stripped of his equipments and uniform, marched through the camp with a guard on either side and four soldiers following behind him at “charge bayonets,” while a fife and drum corps brought up the rear, droning out the “Rogue’s March.” He was sure of being hooted and jeered at throughout the whole camp. There were no restraints put upon the language of his recent associates, and their vocabularies were worked up to their full capacity in reviling him. After he had been thoroughly shown off to the entire command, he was marched outside the lines and set free. This whole performance may seem at first thought a very light punishment for so grave an offence, and an easy escape from the service for such men. But it was considered a most disgraceful punishment. No man liked to be called a coward, much less to be turned out of the army in that disreputable way, and the facts recorded on his regimental roll side by side with the honorable record of his fellows. He was liable to the death penalty if found in camp afterwards. Many more men deserved this punishment than ever received it. There were very few soldiers put out of the service by this method.

TIED UP BY THE THUMBS.

Sometimes an officer was assaulted by a private soldier or threatened by him. For all such offences soldiers were tried by court-martial, and sentenced to the guard-house or to hard labor at the Rip Raps or the Dry Tortugas, with loss of pay; or to wear a ball and chain attached to their ankles for a stated period. These offences were often committed under the influence of liquor, but frequently through temper or exasperation at continued and unreasonable exactions, as the victim believed.

The penalty for sleeping at one’s post, that is, when it was a post of danger, was death; but whether this penalty was ever enforced in our army I am unable to state. There is a very touching story of a young soldier who was pardoned by President Lincoln for this offence, through the pitiful intercession of the young man’s mother. Whether it was a chapter from real life, I am in doubt. I certainly never heard of a sentinel being visited with this extreme penalty for this offence.

The penalty attaching to desertion is death by shooting, and this was no uncommon sight in the army; but it did not seem to stay the tide of desertion in the least. I have seen it stated that there was no time in the history of the Army of the Potomac, after its organization by McClellan, when it reported less than one-fourth its full membership as absent without leave. The general reader will perhaps be interested in the description of the first execution of a deserter that I ever witnessed. It took place about the middle of October, 1863. I was then a member of Sickles’ Third Corps, and my company was attached for the time being to General Birney’s First Division, then covering Fairfax Station, on the extreme left of the army. The guilty party was a member of a Pennsylvania regiment. He had deserted more than once, and was also charged with giving information, to the enemy whereby a wagon-train had been captured. The whole division was ordered out to witness the execution. The troops were drawn up around three sides of a rectangle in two double ranks, the outer facing inward and the inner facing outward. Between these ranks, throughout their entire extent, the criminal was obliged to march, which he did with lowered head. The order of the solemn procession was as shown in the accompanying diagram, the arrows indicating its direction.