Hardtack and coffee

by John Davis Billings

In the later years of the war, when large bounties were being paid by town, city, and State governments, to encourage enlistments, these recruits were often addressed as “bounty-jumpers” by the evil disposed among the old members. But that term was a misnomer, unless these men proved later that they were deserving of it, for a bounty-jumper was a man—I hate to call him one—who enlisted only to get the bounty, and deserted at the earliest opportunity.

Recruits, it should be said, as a class, stood the abuse which was heaped upon them with much greater serenity of temper than they should have done, and, indeed, so anxious were they to win favor with the veterans, and to earn the right to be called and pass for old soldiers, that they generally bore indignities without turning upon their assailants. The term “recruit” in the mouth of a veteran was a very reproachful one, but after one good brush with the enemy it was dropped, if the new men behaved well under fire. In fact, those who abused the recruits most were themselves, as a rule, the most unreliable in action and the greatest shirks when on camp duty.

A WOOD DETAIL.

When a detail made up of recruits and veterans was sent with the wagons for wood, the recruits would be patted on the back by their wily associates, and cajoled into doing most of the chopping, and then challenged to lift the heaviest end of the logs into the wagons, which they seldom refused to do. In the artillery, it usually fell to their lot to care for the spare and used-up horses, not from any intention of imposing upon them, but because cannoneers and drivers had their regular tasks to perform, and all recruits entering the artillery began as spare men, and worked up from the position of private to that of the highest private—a cannoneer.

They always came to camp “flush” with money, and received every encouragement from the bummers of the company to spend it freely; if they did not do this, they were in a degree ostracised, and their lot made much harder. When their boxes of goodies arrived from home, the lion’s share went to the old hands. If the recruit did not give it to them, the meanest of them would steal it when he was away on detail.

Then, all sorts of games were played on recruits by men who liked nothing so well as a practical joke. I recall the case of a young man in my own company who had just arrived, and, having been to the quartermaster for his outfit of clothing and equipments, was asked by one of the practical jokers why he did not get his umbrella.

“Do they furnish an umbrella?” he asked.

“Why, certainly,” said his persecutor, unblushingly. “It’s just like that fraud of a quartermaster to jew a recruit out of a part of his outfit, to sell for his own benefit. Go back and demand your umbrella of him, and a good one too!”