  Historians have long been in the habit of dealing with the past as if it were nothing more than the story of a small number of great men who moved about shaping the world as they saw fit. In reality, leaders are not long successful without followers—the great mass of the common people who do the work, bear the burdens, and suffer the consequences of their leaders’ policies. The Civil War offers a unique opportunity to study the common people of America because during that conflict large numbers of people were directly involved in the great events of the times. For most of them, the war was the single most important event of their lives. Consequently they wrote about it in great detail in their letters and diaries and saved these documents after the conflict ended. It is therefore possible to see the Civil War armies as groups of humans, not masses of automata. The men who followed Sherman, Johnston, and Hood in 1864 left behind information that adds much to an understanding of the campaign. Records kept by the Federal Government show that the typical Northern soldier was 5 feet 8¼ inches tall and weighed 143½ pounds. Doubtless the Southerners were of a similar stature. The same records also indicate that before the war 48 percent of the men had been farmers. Among the Confederates the percentage of farmers was more than half. Relatively few immigrants served in either western army—perhaps one-fifth to one-sixth of the men were of foreign birth. More than half the units in Sherman’s armies were from Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, and Wisconsin also furnished large contingents. Such Eastern States as New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were represented, but their contributions were small. More than two-thirds of the units in the Southern army were from Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia. Other States with significant numbers of troops in the Confederate ranks were Texas, Arkansas, and Louisiana. Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee were represented by units on both sides. Most of the men in the armies that struggled for Atlanta had volunteered for military service in 1861 or 1862. By 1864 they had become veterans, inured to the hardships of military life. Nevertheless, they found the Atlanta Campaign a severe trial. Unlike many Civil War military operations in which fighting occurred at infrequent intervals, the struggle for Atlanta was virtually a continuous battle. Sometimes, as at Resaca, almost all of the opposing forces were engaged; at other times, action was limited to the desultory firing of skirmishers. But only on rare occasions were the soldiers able to escape the sounds and dangers of combat. The weather—whether a freak cold wave in mid-June, the unusually heavy rains of late May and June, or the normal heat of July and August—affected every man and often hampered troop movements as well. Frequently units on the march lost men who could not stand the pace. The soldiers would drop by the roadside until they had recovered their strength, then move on to overtake their comrades. For example, the heat on July 12 was so bad that only 50 of the men in an Illinois regiment could keep up on a 3-mile march. When the armies were in fortified positions, as they were at Kennesaw Mountain, the men often stretched blankets or brush across the trenches to protect themselves from the sun. On rainy days, fence rails or rocks in the trenches served to keep soldiers out of the water. Clothing was also a problem. As a rule, Sherman’s men were better supplied than their opponents, but the wool uniforms they wore were unsuited to the hot Georgia summer. The Confederates had almost no new clothing after the campaign began and their uniforms deteriorated rapidly. A Texan summed up their plight in early June when he wrote: “In this army one hole in the seat of the breeches indicates a captain, two holes a lieutenant, and the seat of the pants all out indicates that the individual is a private.” Rarely did the men of either army have a chance to wash and almost all of them were affected by body lice and other vermin. A sense of humor helped them to survive these trials—soldiers who were pinned down in a water-filled trench by enemy fire consoled themselves with the thought that they were at least drowning the lice. The Federals complained that the retreating Southerners infested the country with lice that attacked the advancing Northerners. Other pests included chiggers, ticks, snakes, scorpions, flies, and ants. By 1864 most of the men in the armies that struggled for Atlanta had become veterans, inured to the hardships of military life. Soldiers in both armies had no scruples about supplementing their rations with whatever could be taken from surrounding farms and homes. Soldiers in both armies suffered from a shortage of food and had no scruples about supplementing their rations with whatever could be taken from the surrounding farms and homes. Corn, pork, chickens, geese, hams, potatoes, apples, and onions disappeared as the armies moved through a neighborhood. Wild berries and fish were also eaten. Nevertheless, there were many times when food was in short supply. One Federal wrote, “most of the time we are on the move and cannot get such as is fit for a man to eat.” The Atlanta Campaign, like many of the later Civil War campaigns, saw the development of trench warfare on a large scale. Protecting works were built from loose rocks, fence rails, tombstones, or even the bodies of dead comrades. By the third or fourth week of the campaign, both sides had mastered the art of field fortification—a trench, with the dirt piled on the side toward the enemy and surmounted by a headlog under which were small openings for firing. Such works left “little but the eyes ... exposed” to enemy fire. In front of the trenches the underbrush would be cleared away and young trees cut so they fell toward the foe. The trees were left partly attached to the stump so that they could not be dragged aside. Telegraph wire was sometimes strung between them to create further obstacles. From behind their fortifications soldiers could pour out such a volume of fire that there was no chance for a successful massed attack—unless complete surprise could be achieved or overwhelming numbers brought against a weak part of the enemy’s line. Much of the fighting was therefore done by small patrols and snipers, especially in heavily wooded country such as the area around New Hope Church and Kennesaw Mountain. The soldier who died in battle could expect no elaborate funeral. Usually the armies were too busy to do more than bury the dead as quickly as possible and they would probably be put in a mass grave near the place where they had fallen. Later the bodies might be exhumed and moved to a cemetery where they would be listed as “unidentified” and reinterred in a numbered but nameless grave. The soldier who was wounded or who was disabled by disease suffered greatly. As a rule, the Northerner who was sent to an army hospital fared better than his opponent because the Federals were better equipped and provisioned than the Confederates. Transportation in crowded hospital wagons over rutted roads or in slow hospital trains was an indescribable horror. The hospitals themselves were better but, by modern standards, uncomfortable and dirty. For painful operations, Northern soldiers often enjoyed the blessing of chloroform. Many Southerners, however, especially those in the hospitals in smaller towns, frequently endured major surgery without the benefit of any opiate except, perhaps, whiskey. In such cases the hospitals echoed with the screams of men undergoing amputations or such treatments as that calling for the use of nitric acid to burn gangrene out of their wounds. {uncaptioned} No precise figures as to the number of men who were killed, wounded, or sick during the campaign are available. However, it is known that for the war as a whole, disease killed about twice as many men as did the weapons of the enemy. Sickness brought on by exposure and unsanitary camps undoubtedly accounted for Religion provided a great source of comfort for many soldiers. Chaplains accompanied both armies but were too few to serve all the troops. Some chaplains preferred to spend the campaign in the rear where they would be safe, while others, of far more influence with the men, braved hardships and dangers with the units they served. At least three of the latter group were killed in battle during the campaign—either while helping the wounded or fighting in the ranks. When chaplains were not available the men sometimes organized and conducted their own religious services. On the other hand, many soldiers ignored religion altogether and continued such “sinful” practices as cursing, drinking, and gambling. Nevertheless, what one soldier called “the missionary influence of the enemy’s cannon” and the constant presence of death and suffering led many to seek comfort in religion. Throughout the campaign, when the armies were in a relatively stable situation, the men sometimes agreed not to shoot at one another. Instead, they would meet between the lines to talk, swim, drink, bathe, enjoy the sun, pick blackberries, exchange newspapers, swap Northern coffee for Southern tobacco, play cards, wrestle, eat, sing, rob the dead, and argue politics. Officers on both sides tried to prohibit this fraternization, but the men in the ranks had the good sense to ignore their orders. These informal truces would usually be respected by all, and when they were over, fighting would not resume until every man had gotten back to his own trenches. Much of the tragedy of the war was reflected in a letter written by a Wisconsin soldier on June 24:
However, regardless of the soldiers’ feelings about each other during those times of truce, the war was being run by the generals and the generals said it must go on. |
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