Mr Lincoln's Army (31 page)

These were the particularized complaints. But
the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. War itself was the real evil,
and the charge was never fully formulated. Those soldiers lacked the easy
articulateness of the modern youth, and they could never quite say what it was
that they hated so much—and so, being unable to say it, they took it out by
singing the sad, mournful little songs that come down the years so
inexpressibly moving.

Chaplains the army had in plenty—one for each
regiment—to give the boys spiritual consolation. Yet as one reads the memoirs
and diaries there is a distinct impression that as a group, and with honorable
exceptions, the chaplains somehow did not quite measure up.
There were too many misfits; in that free-and-easy age, too many unqualified
men, perhaps, had taken holy orders. A Massachusetts regiment had a first
lieutenant who was a minister in private life;
he pulled wires to get himself made regimental chaplain, failed, and wound up
by absconding with ninety dollars in company funds. A diarist in another
Eastern regiment mentioned a chaplain who was
court-martialed for stealing a horse, and added that as a general thing the
chaplains were not too highly thought of. For a time the 48th New York enjoyed
a special odor of sanctity because so many
of its officers had been ministers. It fell from grace, however, when it was
put to work opening a channel for gunboats through some tidal swamp during the
expedition to Port Royal and the Savannah delta.
The work was extremely hard and the weather was very hot and steamy, and all
hands became excessively profane, ex-ministers and all. A brigadier, watching
them at work one day, asked the lieutenant colonel if he really was a preacher.
The officer replied apologetically:
"Well, no, General, I can't say I'm a regularly ordained minister.
I'm just one of those---- local preachers."
¹⁴

With the shepherds backsliding in that way,
the 48th as a flock quickly got a reputation for unbridled wickedness. Famous
throughout the army was the story told about the 48th in connection with this
same coastal expedition. An attack by a new ironclad Rebel gunboat was
anticipated, and elaborate plans were made to entrap the monster with submarine
obstructions that would cause it to run aground on a mud bank. But then the
question arose: how to board the vessel, once it was trapped? It was sheathed
in iron and its ports would be closed flush with its sloping sides, and it
would be impossible to get into it and subdue the crew. The colonel of the
48th (according to the legend) had the answer. Parading his regiment, he said:
"Now, men, you've been in this cursed swamp for two weeks, up to your ears
in mud—no fun, no glory and blessed poor pay. Here's a chance. Let every man
who has had experience as a cracksman or a safe-blower step to the front."
To the last man, the regiment rolled forward four paces and came expectantly to
attention.
¹⁵

Which calls to mind the evil repute of yet
another New York regiment, the 6th, which had a large enrollment of Bowery
toughs-one officer spoke of it as "the very flower of the Dead Rabbits,
the creme de la creme of Bowery society." Army rumor had it that before a
man could enlist in this regiment he had to show that he had done time in a prison:
a libel, beyond question, but the army liked to believe it. And it was alleged
that when this regiment was about to take off for the South the colonel
harangued the men; thinking to inspire them, he drew out his gold watch and
held it up for all to see. They were going, he said, to the Deep South, where
every plantation owner, living luxuriously among his slaves, was waiting to be
despoiled of a watch quite as good as this one. If they were brave soldiers
each might get one for himself. Five minutes later, looking to see what time it
was, he found that his watch was gone. (Writing long afterward, the regiment's
historian complained bitterly about the "vicious nonsense" which was
circulated about the regiment. He blamed the regiment's colonel, who liked the
stories, having "that essentially American cynic humor which often finds
amusement in wild exaggeration.")

Those New York regiments seemed to breed odd
stories. A devout chaplain, it was said, went to the colonel of a Manhattan
regiment which had no chaplain and asked permission to hold services. The
colonel was dubious; his men were a godless lot, he said, and he doubted that
the chaplain would accomplish much. But the chaplain, who believed in saving
sinners where he found them, was insistent. He had just held services, he
said, in the neighboring Brooklyn regiment, and—but that was enough. Between
the Brooklyn and Manhattan regiments there was a great rivalry, and the colonel
instantly ordered the regiment paraded for divine worship, announcing that if a
man smiled, coughed, or even moved he would be thrown in the guardhouse. The
chaplain held his services, and at the end asked if any men would come up and
make profession of faith; thirteen men had done so, he said, in the Brooklyn
regiment. The colonel sprang to his feet.

"Adjutant!"
he bellowed. "Detail twenty men and have them baptized at once. This
regiment is not going to let that damned Brooklyn regiment beat it at
anything!"
¹⁰

For a few days there in Maryland the army
came about as close to contentment as an army on active service ever gets. The
future did not exist, and the past would somehow be made up for; there was only
the present, with easy marches, friendly country, clear weather, and good
roads. A veteran in George H. Gordon's brigade has left a picture of a noonday
halt: each man building a tiny campfire, putting his own personal, makeshift
kettle (an empty fruit can with a bit of haywire for a bail) on to boil water
from his canteen, shaking in coffee from a little cloth bag carried in the
haversack. "At the same dme a bit of bacon or pork was broiling on a
stick, and in a few minutes the warm meal was cooked and dispatched. Then, washing
his knife by stabbing it in the ground, and eating up his plate, which was a
hardtack biscuit, the contented soldier lit his laurel-root pipe, took a few
puffs, lay down with his knapsack for a pillow, and dozed until the sharp
command, 'Fall in!' put an end to his nap."
¹⁷

2.
Crackers and Bullets

The
best thing about being in Maryland, the soldiers agreed, was that the people
had plenty of fresh provisions to sell and were quite willing to sell them. The
army was in funds; most of the men had put in four months on the peninsula, a
war-ravaged country where the people had no food to spare and in any case scorned
to deal with Yankees, and there had been little chance to spend anything. It
had been but little different along the Rappahannock, although in the larger
towns a man could usually make a deal; the 14th New York was alleged to have
passed some three thousand dollars in counterfeit Confederate notes—obtained
heaven knows how —among the luckless shopkeepers of Fredericksburg. But now,
with money in his pocket and things to spend it on, the soldier enjoyed a few
days of better eating than the regulations called for.

The Civil War soldier would have stared in
amazement if he could have looked ahead eighty years to see the War Department,
in World War II, thoughtfully retaining female experts on cookery to devise
tasty menus for the troops and setting up elaborate schools to train cooks and
bakers. No such frills were dreamed of in his day; the theory then seems to
have been that if the raw materials of dinner were provided in quantity the
army would make out all right. In a sense, the government might have been
right. The army did survive, although, looking back at the provisioning and
cooking arrangements, one sometimes wonders why it didn't die, to the last
man, of acute indigestion. For while the government provided plenty of food of
a sort, the business of getting it cooked and served was left entirely up to
the soldiers.

One regimental historian—whose experience was
quite typical—recalled that when his outfit was first assembled in camp the
authorities simply issued quantities of flour, pork, beans, rice, sugar,
coffee, molasses, and bread, made kettles and skillets available, and then
suggested that the men had better form messes of from six to ten members and
get busy on the cooking. The men did as instructed, and in each mess the men
took their turns acting as cooks. (The phrase, "acting as," seems
expressive, somehow.) A few of the fancy-pants Eastern militia regiments which
turned out in response to the first call for ninety-day service had no trouble;
they hired their own civilian cooks and got along fine as long as they stayed
close to town in established camps where ranges, bake ovens, and civilian
markets were handy. But these were the regiments where private soldiers wore
tailor-made uniforms (bought at the individual's expense, as carefully fitted
and frequently as gaudy as a Coldstream Guard colonel's) and they were never
characteristic, nor did they last very long.

Neither, for that matter, did the
extreme sketchiness of the informal regimental messes. Sooner or later the
institution of the regular company cook was established: two to a company,
detailed to the job by order and excused from drill and combat duty. Naturally,
their quality varied greatly. Here and there a regiment was lucky enough to
find that it actually had some professional cooks in the ranks, although that
didn't happen often; nobody, from first to last, was ever enlisted as a cook.
Mostly, the company cooks learned their trade on the job, and the soldiers had
to eat what they prepared while they were learning. A soldier in the 19th
Massachusetts, considering the matter with an indignation which a quarter
century of peace had not diminished, summed it up in words which most soldiers
would have endorsed: "A company cook is a peculiar being: he generally
knows less about cooking than any man in the company. Not being able to learn
the drill, and too dirty to appear on inspection, he is sent to the cook house
to get him out of the ranks."
¹
A notable exception to all of
this was, as might be expected, the 55th New York, full of transplanted
Frenchmen. They knew something about cooking, and their officers' mess, at
least, was famous. President Lincoln dined with them once while they were in
camp on the edge of Washington, and told the officers afterward that if their
men could fight as well as they could cook the regiment would do very well
indeed. They had given him, he added, the best meal he had had in Washington.

A good deal depended on the higher officers.
If they insisted that their men be well fed, the men usually fared pretty well.
Phil Kearny used to have a habit of sticking his head into the company mess
kitchens just before mealtime to sample the food. If the cooking was bad or if
the shack was dirty, the company cooks—plus the company and regimental
officers—were sure to have a bad time of it before the general left.

In
many cases that strange Civil War figure, the contraband, came to the rescue.
Now and then, among the escaped slaves who attached themselves to the army as
the campaigns in Virginia progressed, were house servants who could cook, and
when a detachment got hold of one it never let him go. One company in the 21st
Massachusetts acquired somewhere along the Rappahannock a contraband named
(apparently by themselves) Jeff Davis. He was a first-rate cook, and he served
also as a sort of unofficial commissary agent and general factotum for the
entire company. They picked up a mule for him from some secessionist farmer's
stock, and he loaded the beast with his kitchen equipment and supplies. Every
pay day he would pass the hat and each man would chip in a quarter or half a
dollar which Jeff Davis used as a mess fund, so that the company often enjoyed
extras like fresh eggs, butter, and garden truck, most of them lawfully bought
and paid for. This priceless contraband served with the regiment to the end of
the war and went north with the men after Appomattox; he setded near Worcester,
married, raised a family, and, wrote the regiment's historian, lived happily
ever after —one case where emancipation worked out nicely.

But even after the kitchen arrangements
were formalized there were many, many occasions when cooking was strictly a
matter of each man for himself. On any march where speed was essential, or
where there were frequent brushes with the enemy, regiments would be separated
from their wagon trains for days at a time. Then the men were given
"marching rations"—three days' supply of hardtack, coffee, and salt
pork per man, plus sugar and salt, all carried in the haversack—and, as far as
the army authorities were concerned, that was what the men lived on until the
wagons joined them again. As a result, the experienced soldier always carried
kitchen equipment with him: a little tin pail or empty can for a kettle, and a
tin plate or half a canteen with an improvised wooden handle for frying pan.
With these, and a few splinters to make a fire, he could get by, although what
the results must have done to his stomach is enough to make a dietitian wince.

The hardtack was the great staple. It was a
solid cracker, some three inches square and nearly half an inch thick: solid,
hard, nourishing, and—by surviving testimony—good enough to eat when it was
fresh, which wasn't always the case. Nine or ten of these slabs constituted a
day's ration, and a soldier who wanted more could generally get them, since
many of the men couldn't eat that many and would give some away. For breakfast
and supper, when on the march, the soldier was apt to crumble the hardtack in
his coffee and eat it with a spoon. Now and then a whole hardtack was soaked in
water, drained, and fried in pork fat, when it went under the name of
"skillygalee" and was, said a veteran, "certainly indigestible
enough to satisfy the cravings of the most ambitious dyspeptic." At times
the hardtack was toasted on the end of a stick; if it charred, as it generally
did, it was believed good for weak bowels. Boxes of hardtack, piled high, often
stood in all weathers on open platforms at railway supply depots. If the
hardtack got moldy it was usually thrown away as inedible, but if it just got
weevily it was issued anyway. Heating it at the fire would drive the weevils
out; more impatient soldiers simply ate it in the dark and tried not to think
about it.