Union Soldiers Attire

 

We have often written on these pages about the impact locally during and following the Civil War, and we got thinking about what the Union soldiers carried with them. We specifically had in mind the thousand Federal troops who marched to Benton during the latter part of August 140 years ago. The troops were here to quell the problems perceived in the Upper Fishing Creek Valley. Thanks in part to Cumberland County Historical Society Staff member Janeal Jaroh, we pieced together a good "layman's" idea of how the Union soldiers looked and dressed.

The Union soldier was typically a man in his early 20s, and quite possibly he was a farmer who had either enlisted to fight a war he thought would last a few months, or he had been drafted. The Union soldiers who served against their will were often poor, since anyone who could pay the sum of $300 would be exempt from fighting. Most northern states required a man to be 18 years old, although some teenagers made it into the service. The average age of a Union soldier by the Battle of Gettysburg was reported to be 24. Older men enrolled as surgeons and officers.

Volunteer soldiers carried a great deal of baggage--both personal items and items issued by the army. The typical soldier carried ten pounds of gun, eighty rounds per man of ball cartridge, one pound of powder and five pounds of lead. A knapsack and a haversack and a three-pint canteen filled with three-day rations, rubber blanket, woolen blanket, shelter tent, full winter clothing, tin cup, tin plate, knife, fork, spoon, stationery or a journal, photographs, Bible, tobacco, pipes, mustache comb and brush and a hair comb, shaving tools, sewing kit, toothbrush and charcoal, soap, and cards for playing various games. Soldiers were their own pack horses and soon all but the essentials were discarded. Many soldiers just wore the clothes on their back, and all extra clothes were discarded. Soldiers, fearing death prior to the Gettysburg campaign, threw away their playing cards and the roads into Gettysburg were lined with decks of cards. The reason for throwing away the cards? Most boys didn't want their mothers to find a deck of cards on them in case they were killed.

The haversack, a foot-square tar-covered canvas bag with a waterproof lining became the soldiers' indispensable carryall. It was designed to hold three days' rations. The food soon disappeared leaving the haversack free to carry a few personal items, apples and other fruit and vegetables scavenged from their hikes.

Lets look specifically at what the Union soldiers wore. The Confederate soldiers had the advantage of cotton from the South, but the uniforms of the Union soldiers were made of thick wool, worn year round. The uniform included a fatigue blouse, a light-weight wool coat with an inside pocket and four brass buttons on the front. Blouses were usually made with a wool flannel lining for added warmth and was intended to be worn when the soldier was chopping wood or doing other chores. Some soldiers wore them all of the time. Trousers were wool, light blue in color.

Most Union soldiers wore a "forage cap" made of wool broadcloth with a rounded, flat top, cotton lining, and leather visor. The men would sew their corps badge and attach brass numbers that specified their regiment to the top of the cap. The corps badge was a small flannel cloth badge cut into different shapes. Badges made in the shape of eagles were used to pin the side of the hat up, were used as the motif on many of the buttons, on the cartridge box cross belt plate and on the sword belt plate. The abbreviation U.S. appeared on the oval belt buckle and cartridge box plate.

The army shirt the soldiers received was made of--no surprise here--wool flannel. It was hot and itchy and most men discarded it, preferring to wear cotton shirts and underwear sent from home. There never was a Union uniform that was comfortable in warm weather. Often the uniform was discarded for more casual attire while on campaign, but in public gentlemen were not seen in their shirt-sleeves. Belts were not worn, but suspenders were.

The Union uniform was standardized by War Department orders after the first Battle of Bull Run in 1861. By the second year of the war, almost every Union soldier in a regiment wore the same uniform and carried the same equipment. The Union army was well equipped and uniformed in comparison with the Confederate counterpart. He also had an advantage if equipment or clothing wore out, because it could be easily replaced.

Shoes were made of hard blackened leather with heavy leather soles with no lefts or rights; all the shoes were identical. The soldiers walked through streams, and the leather would form to the shape of the feet in order to get them to fit. Soldiers had metal cleats attached to their shoes to make the shoes last longer and give the wearer traction on loose soil and pasture land. The shoe bottoms looked like miniature horse shoes. The metal on the shoe bottoms was handy to crush coffee beans, but imagine crushing coffee beans with the same boots that had just walked through trail markers and miles of dirt paths. Shoes for the Union soldiers were good quality, and usually lasted as long as the soldier took care of them. On the other foot, however, we read where the Confederate soldier often went into battle without shoes because of the lack of a central way of stocking the needs of the soldier.

Infantrymen wore a cartridge box and sling, a cap box and bayonet scabbard on their belt sets. The belt was thick, black leather with a "US" on the front and a similar brass plate with "US" on the cartridge box. The leather box held forty cartridges. Cartridges were issued in small packages, each containing ten rounds. The cartridge box was the safest way to carry the explosive cartridges, kept in the box by removable tin liners. Each cartridge box also had a small pouch that held musket tools and cleaning patches. Soldiers sometimes carried sixty to eighty rounds of ammunition on a campaign. What didn't fit into the cartridge box could be carried in the soldier's pockets or knapsack. The cap box, a small leather pouch worn on the front of the belt, was for the percussion caps. The scabbard for the bayonet hung on the soldier's left hip.

Union cavalrymen also wore a belt set including a cartridge box for carbine cartridges, a cap box, and a pistol holster. Special straps and hooks clipped onto the cavalry saber.

Union soldiers carried their personal belongings in a knapsack made of heavy canvas, painted black with tar to repel water. The knapsack was called the "soldier's trunk" and was large enough to hold a soldier's extra clothing, personal items, shelter half (or "dog tent"), and a gum blanket. The gum blanket, complete with a Goodyer patent, had two interesting sides to it. On one side, a square checker board helped relieve the bordom of being a soldier. On the other side was a circle, also about a foot in diameter, with a quarter-inch circle in the center. Soldiers would pick head or body lice and place them in the center of the circle and bet on the outcome of the lice leaving the circle. Killing lice was sometimes called "fighting under the black flag," throwing away infested clothing was "giving the vermin a parole," and the common practice of wearing clothing inside-out was "executing a flank movement."

Straps on the top of the knapsack were used to tie on a rolled-up blanket or overcoat. The haversack, made of painted canvas, carried the rations. Inside the haversack was a detachable cotton bag that could be removed and washed. Haversacks were worn over the shoulder and became a handy device to carry pork, hardtack, a chew, coffee beans, and personal items and extra ammunition. The haversacks reeked with grease and germs after several weeks of carrying salt pork and other food stuffs.

"Rations" were the uncooked food issued to soldiers. The soldiers prepared their own meals. Small groups of "messmates" joined together to cook and share their rations in what they called a "mess." Others prepared their meals alone. If a march was imminent, the men cooked everything at once and stored it in their haversack. Here is a list of rations served to the common soldier in the Union army:
• Salt pork, beef, ham or bacon.
• Bread, either hard or soft.
• Potatoes, onions, rice and beans.
• Desiccated vegetables.
• Dried apples and peaches.
• Coffee, tea, sugar and molasses.

Haversacks had a inner cloth bag that could be removed and washed in creeks and streams, but the bags became greasy and foul-smelling over time. Soldiers lived on meat, coffee, sugar, and the dried, hard biscuit called hardtack, a staple of the diet of the soldier. Hardtack was a thick cracker made of flour, water, and sometimes salt. When properly stored, it could last for years.

Heat stroke was a common occurrence for a hot weather march. About half of the deaths from disease during the Civil War were caused by intestinal disorders, mainly typhoid fever, diarrhea, and dysentery. The remainder of the disease-related deaths were from pneumonia and tuberculosis.

Union troops were well fed but many died from ptomaine poisoning (food poisoning), the result of eating "potted meat," often poorly canned meat and other tainted food items and by drinking polluted water. SPAM, the food, was introduced by the Hormel Company of Austin, Minnesota, in 1937 as a variation of "potted meat." SPAM and potted meat combines pork, spices, salt, cooked, then canned. The drug laudanum, an opium-based painkiller prescribed for everything from headaches to tuberculosis, was often carried.

'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,
'Oh hard crackers, come again no more!'

'Tis the song of the soldier, weary, hungry and faint,
Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again no more;
Many days have I chewed you and uttered no complaint,
Hard crackers, hard crackers, come again no more!"

The canteen that the Union soldier carried was made of two pieces of tin with a pewter spout and cork. The large part of the canteen was covered with a dampened cotton and wool cloth to help keep the inside contents cool. Soldiers carried a tin cup for their coffee, a metal plate, and a knife, fork and spoon. Some carried small frying pans for cooking their rations of salt pork and hardtack.

Campaigns normally started out with full knapsacks, but roads soon became littered with discards to lighten the load. Members of the Quartermaster Department followed in wagons, scooping up the discarded items which were then cleaned and re-issued when needed.

Blankets and gum blankets were rolled and tied at one end to form a tube, then slung over the soldier's shoulder. Inside the roll would be a collection of the man's personal items such as writing paper and pen for his daily journal, chewing tobacco, coffee, toothbrush, tooth powder or charcoal, bone comb, soap, and perhaps a small mirror. The Federal troops were required to groom, unlike the confederate soldiers.

A reader asked why all the wool? Wool was very durable and didn't absorb water or stay wet like cotton. Union soldiers even wore woolen caps with leather visors to provide shade when aiming into the sun.

The provision of the Union soldiers was often completed by the "sutlers," merchants who followed the army and sold items not provided by the army, scavenged from abandoned houses and dead soldiers. The sutlers sold leather goods like shoes, haversacks, belts, candy, tea blocks, peanuts in the shell, wool blankets, walking sticks, and clothing. High prices accompanied the sutlers.

Consider for a moment one of the local units, known as the Baldy Guard that later became known as Company H, lead by Civil War Capt. Charles W. Eckman. About 100 young Danville men volunteered to serve in the Union army in 1861, thinking they would be home in two or three weeks. The company of 100 men lost 75 soldiers over the course of the war and during the month of May 1862 marched over 350 miles, 15 days of which no rations were available, fighting eight separate battles, with only five days free from fighting. Journals from that company indicate that worn-out boots and uniforms were replaced by removal from dead soldier's bodies.

Reflect for a moment what it would have been like to participate in a battle under the blazing sun for hours on end in your woolen Civil War uniform. We didn't talk about being wounded, or disease, or suffering from extreme temperatures. We didn't mention having no understanding of basic medicinal procedures, or having wounds wrapped in bloody bandages of other soldiers.

The average Union soldier, unlike his Confederate counter-part, carried about fifty pounds of equipment and clothing, which cost the Federal Government about $42 per man in 1861. Consider as some in the Upper Fishing Creek Valley did 140 years ago if fighting the war was worth it! If you would like to read about a Confederate soldier's life, you can start by going here.

If you have found this an interesting subject, consider driving to Harrisburg to visit the National Civil War Museum that traces the history of the four-year tragedy that pitted North against the South. Closer to home, take the time to view with pride the Soldiers' and Sailors' monument at Market and Main Streets, Bloomsburg, erected to honor the 1,500 county residents who fought in the Civil War. The monument was erected 45 years after Lincoln's Gettysburg Address.

We close with a portion of a letter that Sheila Brandon, webmeister of the Lower Luzerne County Website, provided. It was written to S.A. Benscoter by Jonas Carter Tubbs. The letter ended, "Well son I will close this letter with my daily prayer." The prayer, as written, read, "Our father who art in washington, Uncle Abraham be thy name. The victory won, thy will be done at the south as at the north. Give us this day our rations of crackers and pork, and forgive us our short comings as we forgive our quartermasters for thine is the power, the soldiers, an negros for the space of three years."