 In A Scratch with the
Rebels, a new recruit named Gus Smythe represents the Confederate
experience. His father was the minister at the Second Presbyterian Church in
Charleston. The well-to-do family had shipped young Gus off to college in
Columbia in hopes of keeping him out of the war, but when the Confederacy
initiated a draft in March 1862, Gus and most of his friends decided to enlist
rather than wait. He had first enlisted in a company commanded by Captain
Alex Taylor, the father of one of his college friends, but in obedience to his
parents' wishes, he immediately requested a transfer to Company A, 24th South
Carolina Volunteer Regiment, Hagood's Brigade so that his older brother could keep
an eye on him. By 21 March 1862, he was
a soldier in fact as well as in title, and was beginning to learn what
soldiering was really like. Although he was camped just a few miles from home,
he suffered from homesickness. His frequent letters to his mother give us a
good idea of what camp life was like for a new recruit. The following examples
appear in A Scratch with the Rebels, Chapter 5: "Here we are, safe and
sound, tho' a little jaded by traveling & the labor of fixing up. We got
all our truck down safely, & are now in a measure fixed up, tho' of course
we do not feel settled. We were quite hungry aboard of the boat and had to open
our haversacks. We are now on Goat's Island, but had to land on Cole's Island
with our baggage, and then walk ¾ of a mile to the camp . . . there are too
many sand-fleas and mosquitoes here for comfort." Despite the
fact that he had his own slave, Monday, with him to do the cooking and washing
up, Gus found less and less to like about soldiering. His letters to his mother
tell of snakes and alligators, flies and ticks, "green, slimy water that
promises malaria," and sand that was "everywhere, in eatables as well
as everything else." Gus also complained of the
short rations provided every three days for his mess, which included his
brother Adger, his Uncle Joe, and Monday: hard tack, which the men called
"floating batteries," along with 1 ½ oz. sugar, 6 gills of rice, some
hominy and salt, and a fair amount of tough beef. Nearly every letter he wrote
was filled with requests to send him things that would make his life more
comfortable: mosquito "fixin's" [presumably some sort of repellent],
fishhooks, "a little bunch of orange blossoms to perfume my tent, and a
bundle of candy to sweeten my temper," along with warm socks and another
uniform coat. His most unsoldierly request
was for "a piece of homespun, or old table-cloth, or sheet, or anything in
that line, that will do us for a tablecloth. The table is a little less that 2
yards long and about 3 ½ feet wide. It is very dirty however and unpleasant to
eat off the boards fresh from contact with Monday's hat and our boots,
etc." Apparently, no one told him to keep his feet off the table. Nevertheless, even such callow
recruits were a welcome solution to the short-handed army. The Confederacy was
entering a new phase of the war, when the harsh realities of warfare required
all citizens, from dirt farmer to aristocrat, to relinquish their idealism and
fight for their own survival. Under such circumstances, even very young
soldiers grew up quickly. |
