Some Civil War facts
Apr. 25th, 2021 08:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI have been reading Bell Irvin Wiley's The Life of Billy Yank: The Common Soldier of the Union, and I have learned MANY charming facts, and by charming I mostly mean "useful for a slashfic and/or h/c," although occasionally just charming on general principles.
- by the end of the war, the most common tent type was a dog tent, "a two-man dwelling made by buttoning together the half-shelters carried by the occupants." (I realize these half-tents were basically designed to be interchangeable, but nonetheless this sounds ever so slightly like a soulmate AU.) This design, later known as a pup tent, remained in use in the US army at least through World War II.
(Side note: this book was published in 1952, and the lines of continuity Wiley draws between American soldiers in the Civil War and World War II are really interesting.)
- Union soldiers liked to throw dances for themselves, and in the absence of women generally danced with each other. Sometimes cross-dressing was involved: soldiers would either swipe bonnets and hoop skirts when looting southern houses, or write home (!) asking their folks to send such articles of apparel.
- They also enjoyed snowball fights, and when I say "enjoyed snowball fights" I mean that they would have entire mock snowball battles, "led by their officers with bugles sounding and flags waving."
- There are multiple recorded instances of northern and southern military bands having a sort of "battle of the bands" on the eve of actual battle, with each side competing to play their own patriotic music loud enough to drown out the other side. ("Dixie" vs. "The Battle Cry of Freedom," for instance.) On one occasion both bands rounded off the evening by playing "Home Sweet Home" to the enthusiastic cheers of both sides.
- Wiley relates a great story about a fifer whose punishment for some infraction was to play for two hours outside regimental headquarters. He proceeded to play "On the road to Boston" over and over again for the full two hours.
- In general Civil War soldiers seem to have been insubordinate little shits who did not take well to discipline and I am HERE for it. Wiley tells another great story, this about an Irish sergeant in the Thirtieth Massachusetts, who told his first sergeant "You are a God damned, white-livered, tallow-faced skunk, and if you say that again I will knock every tooth down your throat and kick your arse through the company streets if I lose my stripes by it."
Not everyone is that eloquent but there is a lot of excellently pungent language.
- One of the punishments for insubordination was "bucking and gagging": "Bucking consisted of setting the offender down, tying his wrists together, slipping them over his knees and then running a stick or musket barrel through the space between the knees and over the arms. Gagging was the tying of a bayonet or piece of wood in the mouth."
(This is where we get to the amazing h/c fodder. A soldier crawls back into his dog tent afterward - or is tossed back in, after a few hours of this people often couldn't walk - and is comforted by his tentmate...)
- The one punishment the army didn't allow was flogging. That seems like a weird place to draw the line given that another popular punishment involved literally hanging the offender up by his thumbs, but so it goes.
- by the end of the war, the most common tent type was a dog tent, "a two-man dwelling made by buttoning together the half-shelters carried by the occupants." (I realize these half-tents were basically designed to be interchangeable, but nonetheless this sounds ever so slightly like a soulmate AU.) This design, later known as a pup tent, remained in use in the US army at least through World War II.
(Side note: this book was published in 1952, and the lines of continuity Wiley draws between American soldiers in the Civil War and World War II are really interesting.)
- Union soldiers liked to throw dances for themselves, and in the absence of women generally danced with each other. Sometimes cross-dressing was involved: soldiers would either swipe bonnets and hoop skirts when looting southern houses, or write home (!) asking their folks to send such articles of apparel.
- They also enjoyed snowball fights, and when I say "enjoyed snowball fights" I mean that they would have entire mock snowball battles, "led by their officers with bugles sounding and flags waving."
- There are multiple recorded instances of northern and southern military bands having a sort of "battle of the bands" on the eve of actual battle, with each side competing to play their own patriotic music loud enough to drown out the other side. ("Dixie" vs. "The Battle Cry of Freedom," for instance.) On one occasion both bands rounded off the evening by playing "Home Sweet Home" to the enthusiastic cheers of both sides.
- Wiley relates a great story about a fifer whose punishment for some infraction was to play for two hours outside regimental headquarters. He proceeded to play "On the road to Boston" over and over again for the full two hours.
- In general Civil War soldiers seem to have been insubordinate little shits who did not take well to discipline and I am HERE for it. Wiley tells another great story, this about an Irish sergeant in the Thirtieth Massachusetts, who told his first sergeant "You are a God damned, white-livered, tallow-faced skunk, and if you say that again I will knock every tooth down your throat and kick your arse through the company streets if I lose my stripes by it."
Not everyone is that eloquent but there is a lot of excellently pungent language.
- One of the punishments for insubordination was "bucking and gagging": "Bucking consisted of setting the offender down, tying his wrists together, slipping them over his knees and then running a stick or musket barrel through the space between the knees and over the arms. Gagging was the tying of a bayonet or piece of wood in the mouth."
(This is where we get to the amazing h/c fodder. A soldier crawls back into his dog tent afterward - or is tossed back in, after a few hours of this people often couldn't walk - and is comforted by his tentmate...)
- The one punishment the army didn't allow was flogging. That seems like a weird place to draw the line given that another popular punishment involved literally hanging the offender up by his thumbs, but so it goes.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-26 03:37 am (UTC)Flogging = open wounds = infection = deaths of soldiers outside of combat.
I think the punishments were designed to cause pain, but not kill
because they didn't want to have less soldiers - they wanted all the soldiers they could get for combat
no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-27 03:50 pm (UTC)But seriously, who doesn't want an episode that begins with the fifer being sentenced to play outside regimental headquarters, and throughout the episode we pop in to show him STILL PLAYING "On the Road to Boston" and driving the officers in headquarters mad. ("Should we tell him to stop?" asks a fresh-faced young lieutenant. "No," growls the captain who originally set the punishment, who now looks on the verge of a nervous collapse. "That will mean he's won.")
no subject
Date: 2021-04-28 11:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-28 11:57 am (UTC)