Starvation, Rags, Dirt, and Vermin in the Civil War Army

William A. "Gus" Bowles was 91 years old when the Federal Writer's Project interviewed him. He was a veteran of the Confederate Army during the Civil War and a pioneer settler in Uvalde, Texas. He was born in Mississippi and moved with his family to Texas in 1849. When the Civil War broke out, his father enlisted and went off to war. Why did Gus want to join the fighting? What was military life like from Gus's point of view? What does Gus say about the end of the war?

"When the Civil War broke out, my father went to fight. He bought a little place out of Belton and moved us into the country. It was land for cultivation and as I was about 13 years old, it was up to me to keep things going. My father had been gone a long time when some Confederate soldiers camped near our place one day. They had stopped to eat dinner and I went down there where they were to talk to them. They talked about the war til they got me in the notion of going and I went back to the house and told my mother that I was going to the war . She began trying to keep me from going and talking and begging me not to go, but I told her that I would go down to where my father was and I would try to got in the same regiment with him. "He was stationed at Houston on Buffalo Bayou and man in Colonel Gillispie's regiment. I walked sixteen miles to get to a train and went on down to Houston and then I walked on down to camp, about two miles. My father was sure surprised to see me and asked me what I was doing there. I told him I was afraid that the war would break before I got to go. Well, he knew I was too young so he went and talked to the colonel. He introduced me and the colonel said he would like to get me to go back home but if I wouldn't go, I could stay there with my father because he couldn't sign me up on account of my age. My father had been down there for a long time, so he talked to the colonel about letting me stay there in his place while he went home. I could take his place till he got back. The colonel agreed and they gave me a suit of clothes and a gun and he says, 'Now, I'll tell you, you are going to find this pretty hard for you have to go up to Houston and guard prisoners two hours two or three times a week.' I said I could stand that all right. "I was there two or three months and had to go on guard very week, two or three times and I was getting pretty tired of it. We lived on starvation rations. They give us these here old hard-tack crackers and bacon; no coffee. We had to drink water. They couldn't get coffee for the northern people had it all tied up. The only may we could got a cup of coffee was when we would be on guard. Then we'd go to the coffee house where they served coffee and get a cup. "I had never wrote to my father to come back, so I stayed there till we got word that Lee's army had surrendered. When we got word that he had surrendered, our colonel said, 'Well, the war is about over.' One day we heard a cannon firing down at Galveston and the colonel and General Magruder said, 'That's Yankees firing on Galveston now and we've got to get in line of battle and prepare to get 'em when they come.' That was the first time I ever was in line of battle and I could look up and down the line and see the guns glistening in the sun and the generals riding up and down in front of the lines giving orders -- oh my! I wished I was back home then. They thought the Yankees would come on up to Houston on the train. Along in the evening, we were standing there on that prairie and we seen the train coming and heard the whiltle. The officers said, 'Well, they're coming; we'll have to fight them!' We got ready and had our guns all ready to fire. When that train come in sight, you never saw so many men in your life. They were all over it. When they got in sight, [they began?] waving their hats and handkerchiefs and cheering and the officers called to us and said the war was over because that was our men on their way home. We all started home that same evening. Our general told us that since the soldier's were going to take Houston, we might as well go on in and get what we could too. They hit that town and went into every store and took everything they wanted. All of those private stores were looted. So I decided I would go in and get me a big gun." Mrs. I.E. Doane was 81 years old when interviewed by workers of the WPA Federal Writer's Project. One of 11 children, she moved with her parents to the low country of South Carolina. Her father purchased 3000 acres at the fork of the Salkehatchie River. The family was living there when the Civil War began and her father joined the Confederate Army. What does Mrs. Doane say about Yankee soldiers? About Confederate soldiers? How often do you think other Southerners saw their menfolk the way Mrs. Doane and her family did?

Mrs. Doane says they never even saw any Yankees except for a few stragglers who passed now and then. When Sherman's army was approaching, the Confederates burned the bridge across Salkehatchie River to prevent them crossing, which proved to be most fortunate for the Cummings' family. The river was very high from recent rains and the Yankees were unable to get across. So that, although Sherman's army was so near they could hear them on the other side of the river, this plantation at least escaped the fate which fell to many in this section. Undisturbed by marauding Yankees, the Cummings' were frequently visited by Confederate soldiers. These, ragged and half-starved, passed in hordes, raiding their provisions, killing their chickens, hogs and cattle. Although this was hard, Mrs. Cummings did not begrudge food to these soldiers. Mrs. Doane says she well remembers her mother and "Mudder" baking hoecakes in the kitchen for these hungry soldiers, who were so ravenous that they could not wait for the bread to be browned on both sides, but would snatch it from their hands and eat it half-cooked. She recalls seeing her mother dish up sauer-kraut for the soldiers until they had eaten her entire winter's supply - two barrels. Late one afternoon word came that Confederate soldiers were passing through Salkehatchie, near Yemassee, and that her father was among them. He could not get away to visit his family, but wanted them to meet him at Salkehatchie. It did not take her mother long to make plans. She gave the children their supper, then laid mattresses in the big covered wagon, which was used to haul provisions from Charleston, and put them to bed under the watchful care of "Mudder", who was indeed like a second mother to them. Peter drove the wagon, which was also stocked with food, and Mrs. Cummings, with the baby and her oldest son, drove in the buggy. It was very exciting, Mrs. Doane says, seeing her father and all the Confederate soldiers, but almost as exciting was the experience of camping with the other families who had also come to see soldier husbands and fathers.

Mrs. Ernestine Weiss Faudie was born in Germany but immigrated with her family to Fredericksburg, Texas, in 1853. In her interview with a WPA Federal Writer's Project staff person, she recalled several things about soldiers during the Civil War. What does she say about the hardships and neediness of both soldiers and civilians during the war?

" . . . My father had two brothers to come with him from Germany and were in the Confederate army. Their names were August and Fritz Weiss. They were sent back home from the war on a furlough but had to return and August was captured by the Yankees and taken prisioner and made to walk all the way to the prison. He was later exchanged and came home. The other brother Fritz, came home after the war was over and took tubercolosis and died from this which he contracted in the army. "When any of the soldiers on either side came thro our place they took anything they could find, the rebels felt that they had a right to it for they were fighting for us. They took our horses and killed our hogs and cows to eat, and took our corn. When the blockade was on and we could not get coffee we made it out of sweet potatoes. We cut them up and dried them and boiled them and drank this for coffee. "There was a grist mill close by our place and they ground the meal real fine and crushed it and called it flour; anyway we made our light bread out of this ground and crushed corn. We cooked over a fire place with a big dutch oven. We spun and wove the cotton thread to make our clothes. And speaking of the soldiers I remember an incident that is amusing now but at the time, to the neighbor it was anything but amusing. When a group of soldiers passed these neighbors, she tied a hog to the bed post so they would not see it, but they stopped for a drink of water and heard the hog grunting and so came into the room and took the hog and barbecued it, out in the year and ate it before the neighbor's very eyes."

Starvation, Rags, Dirt, and Vermin In The Civil War Army At school in Pennsylvania when the war broke out, Randolph Shotwell left at once for his native Virginia, determined to join the first Confederate outfit that he found. He served through the whole of the war, until 1864, when he was captured; we shall read later his bitter description of conditions in Federal prisons. After the war he went into journalism in North Carolina, and was active, for a time, in the Ku Klux Klan and in politics. The conditions which he describes so vividly were not characteristic of the whole of the Confederate Army, but were doubtless to be found quite commonly toward the end of the war when the whole economic machinery of the South seemed to be breaking down. Our Quarter Masters department.., really did a great deal more to break down the army than to keep it up. I mean that their shortcomings, their negligence, improvidence, and lack of energy counterbalanced their services. It is a well-known fact, and a most disgraceful one, that when General Lee crossed the Potomac fully ten thousand of his men were barefooted, blanketless, and hatless! The roads were lined with stragglers limping on swollen and blistered feet, shivering all night, (for despite the heat of the day the nights were chilly), for want of blankets; and utterly devoid of underclothes--if indeed they possessed so much as one shirt! And the lack of proper equipment gradually made itself felt on the morale of the men. In the earlier stages of the war when our men were well dressed and cleanly--every company having its wagon for extra baggage-- enabling the private soldier to have a change of clothing and necessary toilet articles--the men retained much of their individuality as citizen-soldiers, volunteering to undergo for a time, the privations and perils of army life, but never forgetting that they were citizens and gentlemen, with a good name and reputation for gentlemanliness to maintain. Hence, when in battle array, these gallant fellows, each had a pride in bearing himself bravely; and when the hour of conflict arrived they rushed upon the foe with an impetuosity and fearlessness that amazed the old army officers; and caused foreign military men to declare them the best fighters in the world. After a while the spirit of the men became broken. Constant marching and fighting were sufficient of themselves to gradually wear out the army; but it was more undermined by the continual neglect and ill-provision to which the men were subjected. Months on months they were without a change of underclothing, or a chance to wash that they had worn so long, hence it became actually coated with grease and dust, moistened with daily perspiration under the broiling sun. Pestiferous vermin swarmed in every camp, and on the march--an indescribable annoyance to every well- raised man yet seemingly uneradicable. Nothing would destroy the little pests but hours of steady boiling, and of course, we had neither kettles, nor the time to boil them, if we had been provided with ample means. As to purchasing clothes, the private soldiers did not have an opportunity of so doing once in six months, as their miserable pittance of $12 per month was generally withheld that length of time, or longer-- (I only drew pay three times in four years, and after the first year, I could not have bought a couple of shirts with a whole months pay.) Naturally fastidious in tastes, and habituated to the strictest personal cleanliness and neatness, I chafed from morning till night at the insuperable obstacles to decency by which I was surrounded, and as a consequence there was not one time in the whole four years of the war that I could not have blushed with mortification at meeting with any of my old friends. It is impossible for such a state of things to continue for years without breaking down ones self-respect, wounding his amour pro pre, stirring his deepest discontent, and very materially impairing his efficiency as a soldier. Starvation, rags, dirt, and vermin may be borne for a time by the neatest of gentlemen; but when he has become habituated to them, he is no longer a gentleman. The personal pride which made many a man act the hero during the first year of the war was gradually worn out, and undermined by the open, palpable neglect, stupidity, and indifference of the authorities until during the last year of the war, the hero became a "shirker," and finally a "deserter.--

Hardtack and Coffee Here is the invaluable John Billings again, giving us what appears to be a wholly faithful account of eating--and not eating--in the Army of the Potomac. It will now give a complete list of the rations served out to the rank and file, as I remember them. They were salt pork, fresh beef, salt beef, rarely ham or bacon, hard bread, soft bread, potatoes, an occasional onion, flour, beans, split pease, rice, dried apples, dried peaches, desiccated vegetables, coffee, tea, sugar, molasses, vinegar, candles, soap, pepper, and salt. It is scarcely necessary to state that these were not all served out at one time. There was but one kind of meat served at once, and this.. . was usually pork. When it was hard bread, it wasnt soft bread or flour, and when it was peas or beans it wasnt rice. Here is just what a single ration comprised, that is, what a soldier was entitled to have in one day. He should have had twelve ounces of pork or bacon, or one pound four ounces of salt or fresh beef; one pound six ounces of soft bread or flour, or one pound of hard bread, or one pound four ounces of corn meal. With every hundred such rations there should have been distributed one peck of beans or peas; ten pounds of rice or hominy; ten pounds of green coffee, or eight pounds of roasted and ground, or one pound eight ounces of tea; fifteen pounds of sugar; one pound four ounces of candles; four pounds of soap; two quarts of salt; four quarts of vinegar; four ounces of pepper; a half bushel of potatoes when practicable, and one quart of molasses. Desiccated potatoes or desiccated compressed vegetables might be substituted for the beans, peas, rice, hominy, or fresh potatoes. Vegetables, the dried fruits, pickles, and pickled cabbage were occasionally issued to prevent scurvy, but in small quantities. But the ration thus indicated was a camp ration. Here is the marching ration: one pound of hard bread; three-fourths of a pound of salt pork, or one and one-fourth pounds of fresh meat; sugar, coffee, and salt. The beans, rice, soap, candles, etc., were not issued to the soldier when on the march, as he could not carry them; but, singularly enough, as it seems to me, unless the troops went into camp before the end of the month, where a regular depot of supplies might be established from which the other parts of the rations could be issued, they were forfeited, and reverted to the government-- an injustice to the rank and file, who, through no fault of their own, were thus cut off from a part of their allowance at the time when they were giving most liberally of their strength and perhaps of their very heats blood.... I will speak of the rations more in detail, beginning with the hard bread, or, to use the name by which it was known in the Army of the Potomac, Hardtack. What was hardtack? It was a plain flour-and-water biscuit. Two which I have in my possession as mementos measure three and one-eighth by two and seven-eighths inches, and are nearly half an inch thick. Although these biscuits were furnished to organizations by weight, they were dealt out to the men by number, nine constituting a ration in some regiments, and ten in others; but there were usually enough for those who wanted more, as some men would not draw them. While hardtack was nutritious, yet a hungry man could eat his ten in a short time and still be hungry.... For some weeks before the battle of Wilsons Creek, Mo., where the lamented Lyon fell, the First Iowa Regiment had been supplied with a very poor quality of hard bread (they were not then [1861] called hardtack). During this period of hardship to the regiment, so the story goes, one of its members was inspired to produce the following touching lamentation:-- Let us close our game of poker, Take our tin cups in our hand, While we gather round the cooks tent door, Where dry mummies of hard crackers Are given to each man; 0 hard crackers, come again no more! Chorus: 'Tis the song and sigh of the hungry, "Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again no more! Many days have you lingered upon our stomachs sore, 0 hard crackers, come again no more!" Theres a hungry, thirsty soldier Who wears his life away, With torn clothes, whose better days are oer; He is sighing now for whiskey, And, with throat as dry as hay, Sings, "Hard crackers, come again no more!" Chorus. 'Tis the song that is uttered In camp by night and day, 'Tis the wail that is mingled with each snore, 'Tis the sighing of the soul For spring chickens far away, "0 hard crackers, come again no more!" Chorus. When General Lyon heard the men singing these stanzas in their tents, he is said to have been moved by them to the extent of ordering the cook to serve up corn-meal mush, for a change, when the song received the following alteration: But to groans and to murmurs There has come a sudden hush, Our frail forms are fainting at the door; We are starving now on horse-feed That the cooks call mush, O hard crackers, come again once more! Chorus: It is the dying wail of the starving, Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again once more; You were old and very wormy, but we pass your failing oer. O Hard crackers, come again once more! The name hardtack seems not to have been in general use among the men in the Western armies. But I now pass to consider the other bread ration--the loaf or soft bread. Early in the war the ration of flour was served out to the men uncooked; but as the eighteen ounces allowed by the government more than met the needs of the troops, who at that time obtained much of their living from outside sources. . . it was allowed, as they innocently supposed, to be sold for the benefit of the Company Fund, already referred to. Some organizations drew, on the requisition, ovens, semi-cylindrical in form, which were properly set in stone, and in these regimental cooks or bakers baked bread for the regiment. But all of this was in the tentative period of the war. As rapidly as the needs of the troops pressed home to the government, they were met with such despatch and efficiency as circumstances would permit. For a time, in 1861, the vaults under the broad terrace on the western front of the Capitol were converted into bakeries, where sixteen thousand loaves of bread were baked daily. The chimneys from the ovens pierced the terrace where now the freestone pavement joins the grassy slope, and for months smoke poured out of these in dense black volumes. The greater part of the loaves supplied to the Army of the Potomac up to the summer of 1864 were baked in Washington, Alexandria, and at Fort Monroe, Virginia. The ovens of the latter place had a capacity of thirty thousand loaves a day.