This Hallowed Ground - Bruce Catton [16]
Some regiments took on especial characteristics. The New York 7th was a dandy outfit, private soldiers wearing tailor-made gray uniforms as trim as so many West Pointers, with hired cooks to prepare the meals. The 33rd Illinois, organized largely through the efforts of Charles E. Hovey, principal of the State Normal University, who became its colonel, had many college students and teachers in its ranks and was known, inevitably, as the “Brains regiment.” All sorts of tales were circulated about it; privates discharged from its rolls for mental incapacity, it was said, promptly won officers’ commissions in less brilliant regiments. The 8th Wisconsin was famous as the “Eagle regiment,” because its Company C came to camp with a live eagle as mascot. A T-shaped perch was devised, and the bird — known as “Old Abe” — was carried between regimental and national flags wherever the regiment went. Old Abe was even taken into battle later on; liked artillery fire and would flap his wings and scream loudly, but grew depressed and nervous under musketry fire. The eagle survived the war and was taken back to Wisconsin and became an essential feature of innumerable post-war veterans’ reunions.11
Military drill, where it was taken seriously, was a nuisance to be endured. An Illinois soldier spoke of “that most exasperating and yet most useful institution of the early army, the German drill sergeant,” and in a labored attempt to transcribe high-Dutch brogue he quoted the sergeant as forever crying: “Eyes vront! Toes oudt! Leetle finger mit de seam de bantaloons! Vy shtand like a — haystack? You neffer make a soldier.” In a Wisconsin regiment a recruit wrote to his parents that his drillmaster “is a proud bugger in his brand new suit of blue,” and confessed that army life “is harder work than farming.” Yet the ardor that took the men to camp sometimes made even the drill seem pleasant, and when a spanking new Ohio regiment was given muskets and introduced to the manual of arms one soldier noted that “the boys take to it as natural as a three-months calf to a pail of warm milk.” Nor was military routine always repellent. Most recruits were fascinated by the lights-out ritual. At nine o’clock in the evening the regimental band would play “tattoo,” after which the roll would be called. Half an hour later came “taps,” which meant that everyone must be in bed with lights out; and “taps,” according to old-army procedure, was given by a drummer, not by a bugler. In the silent, darkening camp a lone drummer would stand at the head of the regimental street and tap out the single drumbeats that gave the business its name. A certain rhythm was always followed, and the men fitted words to it: “Go to bed Tom! Go to bed Tom! Go to bed, go to bed, go to bed Tom!”12
Needed equipment often was lacking. An Illinois regiment could get no more muskets than were needed to arm the camp sentries, and for quite a time — until the first enthusiasm wore off, anyway — the men eagerly competed for the right to take a musket and stand guard; a state of mind which they recalled with amused wonder a year later. In Iowa, recruits were told to bring no change of clothing to camp as Uncle Sam would provide everything. One regiment had to wait for more than a month before Uncle Sam provided as much as a spare undershirt, and a generation later the regimental historian was remembering that month with wry distaste. In Ohio the first recruits to reach Camp Dennison found that the camp consisted entirely of a huge pile of raw lumber and a very muddy cornfield; before anyone could get shelter the men had to build their own barracks.13
The first volunteers were enlisted for ninety days only and were technically state militia called temporarily into Federal service. Long before most of them were ready to leave training camp — on May 3, actually, little more than a fortnight after Fort Sumter — President Lincoln issued a call for three-year volunteers. These