The Northern soldier was the best clothed, and the clothing was uniform, which could not be said of that of the Southern soldier, who, although he was supposed to be dressed in gray or butternut, was really dressed in whatever he could pick up, which often did not include overcoats or oil-blankets. Supplied with good materials, and plenty of them, the Northern soldier was expected to take care of them, and he did so. But the Confederate soldier seldom took care to keep his weapons bright and free from dirt and rust. The Confederate lacked thoroughness in his camp housekeeping; he almost never fixed up the little comfortable arrangements that characterized a Union camp, if occupied for any length of time, nor did he "police" his camp carefully, to keep it neat or even clean, the lack of ordinary cleanliness being so marked as really to contribute materially to losses through disease. The way in which the Union soldier made even a temporary camp homelike was well described by an army correspondent, Benjamin F. Taylor:
"No matter where or when you halt them, they are at once at home. They know precisely what to do first, and they do it. I have seen them march into a strange region at dark, and almost as soon as the fires would show well they were twinkling all over the field, the Sibley cones rising like the work of enchantment everywhere, and the little dog-tents lying snug to the ground, as if, like the mushrooms, they had grown there, and the aroma of coffee and tortured bacon suggesting creature comforts, and the whole economy of life in canvas cities moving as steadily on as if it had never been intermitted. The movements of regiments are as blind as fate. Nobody can tell to-night where he will be to-morrow, and yet with the first glimmer of morning the camp is astir, and the preparations begin for staying there forever. An axe, a knife, and a will are tools enough for a soldier house-builder. He will make the mansion and all its belongings of red cedar, from the ridge-pole to the forestick, though a couple of dog-tents stretched from wall to wall will make a roof worth thanking the Lord for. Having been mason and joiner, he turns cabinetmaker; there are his table, his chairs, his sideboard; he glides into upholstery, and there is his bed of bamboo, as full of springs and comfort as a patent mattress. He whips out a needle and turns tailor; he is not above the mysteries of the saucepan and camp-kettle; he can cook, if not quite like a Soyer, yet exactly like a soldier, and you may believe that he can eat you hungry when he is in trim for it. Cosey little cabins, neatly fitted, are going up; here is a boy making a fireplace, and quite artistically plastering it with the inevitable red earth; he has found a crane somewhere, and swung up thereon a two-legged dinner-pot; there a fellow is finishing out a chimney with brick from an old kiln of secession proclivities; yonder a bower-house, closely interwoven with evergreen, is almost ready for the occupants; the avenues between the lines of tents are cleared and smoothed—'policed,' in camp phrase; little seats with cedar awnings in front of the tents give a cottage-look, while the interior, in a rude way, has a genuine homelike air. The bit of looking-glass hangs against the cotton wall; a handkerchief of a carpet just before the bunk marks the stepping-off place to the land of dreams; a violin case is strung to a convenient hook, flanked by a gorgeous picture of some hero of somewhere, mounted upon a horse rampant and saltant, 'and what a length of tail behind!'
"The business of living has fairly begun again. There is hardly an idle moment; and save here and there a man brushing up his musket, getting that 'damned spot' off his bayonet, burnishing his revolver, you would not suspect that these men had but one terrible errand. They are tailors, they are tinkers, they are writers; fencing, boxing, cooking, eating, drilling—those who say that camp life is a lazy life know little about it. And then the reconnoissances 'on private account;' every wood, ravine, hill, field, is explored; the productions, animal and vegetable, are inventoried, and one day renders them as thoroughly conversant with the region round about as if they had been dwelling there a lifetime. Soldiers have interrogation points in both eyes. They have tasted water from every spring and well, estimated the corn to the acre, tried the watermelons, bagged the peaches, knocked down the persimmons, milked the cows, roasted the pigs, picked the chickens; they know who lives here and there and yonder, the whereabouts of the native boys, the names of the native girls. If there is a curious cave, a queer tree, a strange rock anywhere about, they know it. You can see them with chisel, hammer, and haversack, tugging up the mountain, or scrambling down the ravine, in a geological passion that would have won the right hand of fellowship from Hugh Miller, and home they come with specimens that would enrich a cabinet. The most exquisite fossil buds just ready to open, beautiful shells, rare minerals, are collected by these rough and dashing naturalists."
| AN OLD-FASHIONED TRAINING DAY. |
In the larger equipments of the army there was again a superiority in those of the North. Their wagon trains were better, the wagons of a uniform style, and they were marked with the name of regiment and brigade, so that there never was any doubt as to where a stray wagon belonged. The Confederate wagons were of all sorts and shapes and sizes, a job lot, ill-matched, ill-kept, and ill-arranged, and the harnesses were patchwork of inferior strength.
Residents of the South observed with pain one distinction between the armies, which reminds one of Henry W. Grady's remark about General Sherman, that he was a smart man, "but mighty careless about fire." Encamped in a Southern community, a Southern army was careful not to forage promiscuously, or appropriate to its own uses the various provisions and live-stock of the non-combatant people who lived near. But the Northern troops had a feeling that they were in the enemy's country and that they were entitled to live on it. There were orders against unauthorized foraging; but the temptation to bring into camp an occasional chicken, sundry pigs, cows, vegetables, and in some cases even money and jewelry, is said by Southern residents to have sometimes overcome a soldier here and there; so that the visit of a Northern army was the signal for the good people of the neighborhood to get as much of their belongings out of sight as possible. What was taken in this way was taken without the formality of a request, of payment, or of a receipt given, except when the victim claimed to be a loyal Unionist. The Southern soldiers usually paid for what they took, even if it was in Confederate script; but the Northern pillagers did not do even that. Those who recall and chronicle this habit, admit that it was due in great measure to the foreign element in the Northern army, and to the recruits from the large cities, elements which in the Confederate army were comparatively scarce.
The practical jokes that were played on some of the Southern farmers illustrate the tendency on the part of the Northern soldier to "do" a rebel. One farmer drove into a Union camp with a forty-gallon barrel of cider, which he sold by the quart to the men, over the side of his wagon. He was astonished to find that his barrel was empty after he had sold only about twenty quarts, and on investigating the cause, he discovered that while he was engaged in peddling the cider over the side board, some soldiers had put an auger through the bottom of his wagon and into the barrel, and had drawn the rest off into their canteens. Another trader lost the contents of a barrel of brandy which he had stored in a shanty overnight, in a similar manner; while several farmers concluded that it was in vain to go to the Yankee camp with wagon loads of apples or other fruit, unless they had a detachment to guard every side of the wagon, for while they dealt fair over one side, their stock would disappear over the other. One who had suffered in this way came to the conclusion that "the Yankees could take the shortening out of a gingercake without breaking the crust."
SOUTHERN SPIES AND SCOUTS IN THE WAR.
BY F. G. DE FONTAINE.