FROM COURT TO CAMP.
The winter of '61-2 set in early, with heavy and continued rains. By
Christmas the whole surface of the country had been more than once
wrapped in heavy snow, leaving lakes of mud over which no wheeled thing
could work its way.
Active operations--along the whole northern frontier at least--were
certainly suspended until spring; and both armies had gone into winter
quarters. Military men agree that a winter in camp is the most
demoralizing influence to which any troops can be subjected. To the new
soldiers of the South it was a terrible ordeal--not so much from the
actual privations they were called upon to endure as from other and
more subtle difficulties, against the imperceptible approaches of which
they could not guard. The Government had used every effort to make the
men comfortable, and to supply them with all necessaries at its
disposal; but still there were numerous articles it could not command.
The good caterers at home spared no pains, no exercise of ingenuity,
and no pinching from fireside supplies, to make the loved ones in camp
comfortable. The country had not begun to feel the effects of actual
want in any quarter; but increased demand had lessened supplies on hand
and somewhat enhanced prices; so the men were comfortably clothed, fed
with plain, but plentiful and wholesome food, and supplied with all the
absolute necessaries of camp life. In addition to these, boxes of all
sizes, shapes and contents came into the camps in a continuous stream;
and the thousand nameless trifles--so precious because bearing the
impress of home--were received daily in every mess from the Rio Grande
to the Potomac. Still, as the winter wore on, news from the armies
became gloomier and gloomier, and each successive bulletin bore more
dispiriting accounts of discontent and privation, sickness and death.
Men who had gone into their first fight freely and gaily; who had heard
the whistling of bullets as if it had been accustomed music, gave way
utterly before the unseen foes of "winter quarters."
Here and there, a disciplinarian of the better sort--who combined
philosophy with strictness--kept his men in rather better condition by
constant watching, frequent and regular drills, rapid marches for
exercise, and occasional change of camp. But this was the exception,
and the general tone was miserable and gloomy. This could in part be
accounted for by the inexperience of the men, and of their immediate
commanders--the company officers--in whose hands their health and
spirits were in no small degree reposed. They could not be brought to
the use of those little appliances of comfort that camp life, even in
the most unfavorable circumstances, can afford--strict attention to the
utmost cleanliness in their persons and huts; care in the preparation
of their food, and in its cookery; and careful adherence to the simple
hygienic rules laid down in constant circulars from the medical and
other departments. Where men live and sleep in semi-frozen mud, and
breathe an atmosphere of mist and brush smoke--and every one knows the
wonderfully penetrating power of camp-fire smoke--it is not to be
expected that their comfort is enviably great; especially where they
have left comfortable homes, and changed their well-prepared, if
simple, food for the hard and innutritious army ration. But such
creatures of habit are we that, after a little, we manage by proper
care to make even that endurable.
Soldiers are like children, and require careful watching and constant
reminding that these small matters--which certainly make up the sum of
camp life--should be carefully attended to for their own good. Rigid
discipline in their enforcement is necessary in the beginning to get
novices properly started in the grooves. Once set going, they soon
become matters of course. But once let soldiers get accustomed to
careless and slovenly habits, and no amount of orders, or punishment,
can undo the mischief. Unfortunately, the armies of the South began
wrong this first winter, and the descent was easy; and they made the
new road upon which they had entered far harder than necessary, by
neglecting landmarks so plainly written that he who runs may read.
_Nostalgia_--that scourge of camps--appeared in stubborn and alarming
form; and no exertion of surgeon, or general, served to check or
decrease it. Men, collected from cities, accustomed to stated hours of
business and recreation, and whose minds were accustomed to some
exercise and excitement, naturally drooped in the monotony of a camp
knee in mire, where the only change from the camp-fire--with stew-pan
simmering on it and long yarns spinning around it--was heavy sleep in a
damp hut, or close tent, wrapped in a musty blanket and lulled by the
snoring of half a dozen comrades.
Hale, sturdy countrymen, accustomed to regular exercise and hard work,
with nothing to do all day but sun themselves and polish their
bayonets, naturally moped and pined for the homes that were missing
them so sorely. They, too, found the smoky blaze of the camp-fire but a
sorry substitute for the cheerful hearth, where memory pictured the
comely wife and the sturdy little ones. The hardy mountaineer, pent and
confined to a mud-bound acre, naturally molded and panted for the fresh
breezes and rough tramps of his far-away "roost."
The general morality of the camps was good, but praying is a sorry
substitute for dry homes and good food; and, though chaplains were
earnest and zealous, the men gradually found cards more exciting than
exhortations. They turned from the "wine of life" to the canteen of
"new dip" with a spiteful thirst. There were attempts by the higher
officers--which proved abortive--to discountenance gambling; and the
most stringent efforts of provost-marshals to prevent the introduction
of liquor to camp reduced the quantity somewhat, but brought down the
quality to the grade of a not very slow poison.
Being much in the numerous camps that winter, I was struck with the
universal slouch and depression in ranks where the custom had been
quick energy and cheerful faces. Through the whole army was that
enervating moldiness, lightened only by an occasional gleam from those
"crack companies" so much doubted in the beginning of the war.
It had been thought that the gay young men of cities, used to the
sedentary life of profession, or counting-room--and perhaps to the
irregularities of the midnight dinner and next-morning ball--that these
men, steady and unflinching as they might be under fire--and willing as
they seemed to undertake "what man dare" in danger or privation, would
certainly break down under the fatigues of the first campaign.
They had, on the contrary, in every instance that came under my ken,
gone through that campaign most honorably; had borne the marches, the
most trying weather and the greatest straits of hunger, with an
elasticity of mind and muscle that had long since astounded and
silenced their most active scoffers. Now, in the bitter depths of
winter, they went through the dull routine of camp, cheerful and
buoyant, at all times ready for their duty, and never grumbling at the
wearing strain they felt to be necessity. When I say that in every
Confederate camp _the best_ soldiers of that winter were "crack
companies" of the gay youths of the cities, I only echo the verdict of
old and tried officers. Where all did their duty nobly, comparison were
invidious; but the names of "Company F," the Mobile Cadets, the
Richmond Blues, and Washington Artillery, stand on the record of those
dark days as proof of the statement. Many men from the ranks of these
companies had already been promoted to high positions, but they had not
yet lost their distinctive characteristics as _corps d' elite_; and
admission to their ranks was as eagerly sought as ever. A strange fact
of these companies was frequently stated by surgeons of perfect
reliability: their sick reports were much smaller than those of the
hardiest mountain organizations. This they attributed to two causes:
greater attention to personal cleanliness and to all hygienic
precautions; and the exercise of better trained minds and wills keeping
them free from the deadly "blue devils." Numbers of them, of course,
broke down at once. Many a poor fellow who would have achieved a
brilliant future perished mid the mud of Manassas, or slept under the
snowy slopes of the western mountains. The practice was kill or cure,
but it was in a vast majority of cases, the latter; and men who stood
the hardship thrived upon it.
The Marylanders, too, were a marvel of patience. Self-made exiles, not
only from the accustomed comforts of home, but cut off from
communication with their absent ones and harrowed by vague stones of
wrong and violence about them--it would have been natural had they
yielded to the combined strain on mind and matter. At midwinter I had
occasion to visit Evansport and Acquia creek. It had been bitter cold;
a sudden thaw had made the air raw and keen, while my horse went to his
girths at every plunge. More than once I had to dismount in mire
girth-deep to help him on. Suddenly I came upon a Maryland camp--supports
to a battery. Some of the soldiers I had known as the gayest and most
petted of ball-room and club; and now they were cutting wood and frying
bacon, as if they had never done anything else. Hands that never before
felt an ax-helve plied it now as if for life; eyes that were accustomed
to look softly into
"The sweetest eyes that ever were,"
in the pauses of a waltz, now peered curiously in the reeking stew-pan.
Many of their names recalled the history of days long gone, for their
father's fathers had moved in stately pageant down its brightest pages;
and blood flowed in their veins blue as the proudest of earth's
nobility. They had left affluence, luxury, the caresses of home--and,
harder than all, the habits of society--for what?
Was it thoughtlessly to rush foremost in the delirious shock of
battle; to carelessly stand unflinchingly where the wing of death
flapped darkest over the glare of the fight; to stand knee-deep in
Virginia mud, with high boots and rough shirts, and fry moldy bacon
over fires of wet brush? Or was it that the old current in their
veins bounded hotly when they believed a wrong was doing; that all
else--home--luxury--love--life!--faded away before the might of
principle?
It was an odd meeting with the crowd that collected about me and
anxiously asked the news from Richmond, from abroad, but above all,
from home. Bronzed and bearded, their huge boots caked with Potomac mud
and rough shirts open at their sunburnt throats; chapped hands and
faces grimy with smoke and work, there was yet something about these
men that spoke them, at a glance, raised above the herd. John Leech,
who so reveled in the "Camps at Cobham," would here have found a
companion-piece for the opposition of the picture.
"Hello, old boy! any news from home?" yelled a whiskered sergeant,
jumping from a log where he was mending a rent in his pants, and giving
me a hand the color of his favorite tan gloves in days lang
syne--"Pretty tight work up here, you see, but we manage to keep
comfortable!"--God save the mark!
"What do you think Bendann would give for a negative of me?" asked a
splendid fellow leaning on an ax, the rapid strokes of which he stilled
at my approach--"Not a half bad thing for a fancy ball, eh?" Charles
street had no nattier man than the speaker in days gone; and the
tailors had found him their pearl beyond price. But Hilberg's best was
now replaced by a flannel shirt with many a rent, army pants and a
jacket that had been gray, before mud and smoke had brought it near the
unity of Joseph's best garment.
"I'd show well at the club--portrait of a gentleman?" he added lightly.
"Pshaw! Look at _me_! There's a boot for a junior assembly! Wouldn't
that make a show on a waxed floor?" and little Charley H. grinned all
the way across his fresh, fair face, as he extended a foot protruding
from what had been a boot.
"D----l take your dress! Peel those onions, Charley!" cried a baldheaded
man from the fire--"Don't your heart rise at the scent of this _olla_,
my boy? Don't it bring back our dinners at the Spanish legation? Stay
and dine with us--if Charley ever has those onions done--and you'll
feast like a lord-mayor! By the way, last letters from home tell me
that Miss Belle's engaged to John Smith. You remember her that night at
Mrs. R.'s fancy ball?"
"Wouldn't mind having a bottle of Mrs. R.'s sherry now to tone up these
onions," Charley said ruefully. "It _would_ go well with that stew, taken
out of a tin cup--eh, cookey?"
"We had lots better at the club," the cook said, thoughtfully stirring
the mess on the fire--"It was laid in before you were born, Charley.
Those were days, boys--but we'll drink many a bottle of it yet under
the stars and bars!"
"That we will, old man! and I'll carry these boots to a junior assembly
yet. But I _would_ like a bottle of old Mrs. R.'s to drink now, _faute
de mieux_, to the health of the Baltimore girls--God bless 'em!"
"That I would, too," said the sergeant. "But that's the hard part of
it!"--and he stuck his needle viciously through the pants--"I always
get savage when I think of our dear women left unpro----"
"No particular one, sergeant? You don't mean Miss Mamie on Charles
street, do you? Insatiate archer!" cried Charley.
"Do your cooking, you imp! I mean my dear old mother and my sick
sister. D----n this smoke! It will get in a fellow's eyes!"
When Miss Todd gave her picnic in the valley of Jehoshaphat and talked
London gossip under the olives, it was an odd picture; it is strange to
see the irrepressible English riding hurdles in the Campagna, and
talking of ratting in the shadow of the Parthenon, as though within the
beloved chimes of Bow; but it was stranger still to see those
roughened, grimed men, with soleless boots and pants tattered "as if an
imp had worn them," rolling out town-talk and well-known names in such
perfectly natural manner.
And this was only a slice from any camp in the service. The gentlemen
troops stood hardships better, and bore their troubles and difficulties
with lighter hearts, than any of the mixed corps. It is true that few
of them were left as organizations at the end of the war.
As the army increased, men of ability and education naturally sifted to
higher place; but they wore their spurs after they had won them. They
got their commissions when they had been through the baptism of blood
and fire, and of mud and drudgery as well. They never flinched. The
dreariest march--the shortest rations--the deepest snow and the
midnight "long roll"--found them ready and willing. History furnishes
no parallel. The bloods of the cavalier wars rode hard and fought
long. They went to the battle with the jest upon their lips, and
walked gaily to the scaffold if need be. But they not only died as
gentlemen--they lived as they died. Their perfumed locks were never
draggled in the mire of the camp, and their silken hose never smirched
but in the fray. Light songs from dainty lips and brimming goblets
from choice _flacons_ were theirs; and they could be merry to-night if
they died to-morrow.
The long rapiers of the Regency flashed as keen in the smoke of the
fight as the jest had lately rung in the mistress' bower; and how the
_blase_ club man and the lisping dandy of Rotten Row could change to
the avenging war god, the annals of the "Light Brigade" can tell.
But these lived as gentlemen. In the blackest hour, when none believed
"the king should have his own again;" in the deadliest fray and in the
snow-bound trench, _they_ waved the sword of command, and the only
equality they had with their men was who should fight the furthest.
But here were gentlemen born--men of worth and wealth, education and
fashion--delving side by side with the veriest drudge; fighting as only
gentlemen can fight, and then working as gentlemen never worked before!
Delicately bred youths who had never known rougher work than the _deux
temps_, now trudged through blinding snows on post, or slept in
blankets stiff with freezing mud; hands that had felt nothing harder
than billiard-cue or cricket-bat now wielded ax and shovel as men never
wielded them for wages; the epicure of the club mixed a steaming stew
of rank bacon and moldy hard-tack and then--ate it!
And all this they did without a murmur, showing an example of steadfast
resolution and unyielding pluck to the hardier and tougher soldiers by
them; writing on the darkest page of history the clear axiom: _Bon
sang ne peut mentir!_