Various - The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863

But these after achievements are no part of my present story. The more striking passages of this great war for freedom will be well and fully told. Victories like Donelson, death-struggles like that on the plains of Shiloh, will take their place in ample proportions on the page of history. As years roll on they will stand out in strong relief, and be the mountain tops which receding posterity will still recognize when all the rest has sunk beneath the horizon. It were well that some record should also be made of the long and dull days and weeks and months that intervened between these stirring incidents: at least that enough should be told of them to remind our children that they existed, and in this as in all other wars, made up the great bulk of its toils. This indeed seems the hardest lesson for every one but soldiers to learn. Few but those who have had actual experience know how small a part fighting plays in war; how little of the soldier's hardships and privations, how little of his dangers even are met upon the battle field. Tame as stories of barrack life must seem when we are thrilling with the great events for which that life furnishes the substratum, it is worth our while, for the sake of this lesson, to give them also their page upon the record, to spread these neutral tints in due proportion upon the broad canvas. It is partly for this reason that I turn back to sketch the trivial and monotonous scenes of a winter in barracks. It is well to remind you, dear young friends, feminine and otherwise, at home, that a great many days and nights of patient labor go to one brilliant battle. When your loudest huzzas and your sweetest smiles are showered on the lucky ones who have achieved great deeds and walked through the red baptism of fire, remember also how much true courage and fortitude have been shown in bearing the daily hardships of the camp, without the excitement of hand-to-hand conflict.

The new uniforms came at last, and all the slang epithets with which our regiment had been received were duly transferred to the newly arrived squads of the next in order. Then we began to speculate on the time and mode of our departure. It was remarkable how keenly the most contented dispositions entered into these questions. There is in military life a monotony of routine, and at the same time a constant mental excitement, that make change—change of some sort, even from better to worse—almost a necessity. I had already stretched myself in my bunk one evening, and was half asleep, when I heard joyful voices cry out, 'That's good!' and unerring instinct told me that orders had come for the –th to move. On the third day again we stood in our ranks upon the muddy esplanade of the Benton Barracks, patiently waiting for the A. A. A. G. and the P. Q. M. to get through the voluminous correspondence which was to result in quarters and rations. At least twenty thousand men were crowded at that time into this dismal quadrangle. Perseverance and patience could overcome the prevalent impression at the commissary that every new regiment was a set of unlawful intruders, to be starved out if possible, but could not conquer the difficulty of crowding material bodies into less space than they had been created to fill. Two companies had to be packed into each department intended for one. As for 'field and staff,' they were worse off than the privates, and took their first useful lesson in the fact that they were by no means such distinguished individuals in the large army as they had been when showing off their new uniforms at home. It must have been comforting to over-sensitive privates to hear how colonels and quartermasters were snubbed in their turn by the 'general staff.' The regimental headquarters, where these crest-fallen dignitaries should have laid their weary heads, were tenanted by Captains A., who had a pretty wife with him, and B., who gave such nice little suppers, and C., whose mother was first cousin to the ugly half-breed that blew the general's trumpet from the roof of the great house in the centre. Wherefore the colonel, the surgeon, the chaplain, the quartermaster, and the 'subscriber' were content to spread their blankets for the first night with a brace of captains, on the particularly dirty floor of Company F., and dream those 'soldier dreams' in which Mrs. Soldier and two or three little soldiers—assorted sizes—run down to the garden gate to welcome the hero home again, while guardian angels clap their wings in delight and take a receipt for him as 'delivered in good order and well-conditioned' to the deities that preside over the domestic altar.

Such dreams as these were easy matters for most of us, who had no experience. With our regimental colors fresh from the hands of the two inevitable young ladies in white, who had presented them (with remarks suitable to the occasion), we saw nothing before us but a march of double quick to 'glory or the grave.' Luckily we had cooler heads among us: men who had fought in Mexico, camped in the gulches of California, drilled hordes of Indians in South America, led men in desperate starving marches over the plains. These went about making us comfortable in a very prosaic, practical way. The first call for volunteers from the ranks was not to defend a breach or lead a forlorn hope, as we had naturally expected, but—for carpenters. They were set to knocking down the clumsy bunks in the men's quarters and rebuilding them in more convenient shape, piercing the roof for ventilators, building shanties for the dispensary and the quartermaster's stores. Colonel and chaplain made a daily tour of the cook rooms and commissary, smelt of meat, tasted hard bread, dived into dinner pots, examined coffee grounds to see whether any of the genuine article had accidentally got mixed with the post supply of burnt peas. The surgeon commenced vaccinating the men, and taking precautions against every possible malady, old age, I believe, included. Meanwhile the adjutant and the sergeant-major shut themselves up in a back room like a counting house, and were kept busy copying muster rolls, posting huge ledger-like books, making out daily and nightly returns, receiving and answering elaborate letters from the official personages in the next building. The company officers and men were assigned their regular hours for drill, as well as for everything else that men could think of doing in barracks. In short, we found ourselves all drawn into the operations of a vast, cumbrous, slow-moving machine, with a great many more cogs than drivers, through which no regiment or any other body could pass rapidly. The time required in our case was nearly three months.

How much of this delay was necessary or beneficial I leave for wiser military critics than myself to discuss. The complaint it awakened at the time has almost been forgotten in the glory of the achievements which followed when the great army actually began to move. Perhaps it is remembered only by those who mourn the brave young hearts that never reached the battle field, but perished in the inglorious conflict with disease and idleness. Few appreciate the fearful loss suffered from these causes, unless they were present from day to day, watching the regular morning reports, or meeting the frequent burial squads that thronged the road to the cemetery. Even in a place like St. Louis, with amply provided hospitals, and all the appliances of medical skill at hand, men died at a rate which would have carried off half the army before its three years' service expired. And of these deaths by far the greater portion were the direct consequence of idleness and its consequent evils in camp. The healthiest body of troops I saw in Missouri were busy night and day with scouting parties, and living in their tents upon a bleak hilltop, ten miles from the nearest hospital or surgeon. When their regiment was concentrated after four months' service, this company alone marched in the hundred and one men it had brought from home, not a single man missing or on the sick list. Perhaps another such instance could scarcely be found in the whole army.