Figure 1: Rows of tents at a U.S. Army encampment in Virginia in May 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign (Library of Congress 1862).
United States (U.S.) and Confederate soldiers in the Civil War experienced the pressures of weather in a variety of ways over the course of their military service. The weather was not simply a passive backdrop to their time in the army; it was a central preoccupation. While this could be said about most people in mid-nineteenth-century America, wartime service necessitated much longer lasting exposure to the elements then life at home. One of the things that sets the soldier’s encounters with the weather apart from others was that they essentially had no reprieve. They lived outside for years at a time. Who else in nineteenth-century American society lived outside continuously for years? The weather intersected with some of the most central experiences of soldiering, from tent camping and marching to performing sentry duty and fighting on the battlefield. Most men understood that enduring the vagaries of the weather was a necessary part of war, but most nevertheless believed that bad weather made life in the military much more difficult and disagreeable.
One of the most frequent sources of hardships for soldiers was wet and stormy weather. Men spent the majority of their service in encampments, living in different types of tents, ranging from large and fully enclosed models to smaller and lightweight ones such as the commonly used open-ended shelter tents (Figure 1). No matter the type of tent, inclement conditions usually exceeded their capacity to shield against the elements, particularly heavy rain. Water leaked through canvas roofs or flowed across the ground into tents, flooding the shelters with inches or even feet of water. Soldiers’ bodies and possessions became drenched, interfering with their ability to sleep and forcing them to live in a persistent state of wetness until the rain subsided. In December 1862, Pennsylvania Corporal Calvin S. Heller penned in his diary in Virginia: “It is not a very pleasant [sic] affair, to be roused from one’s slumber by a flood underneath and the pouring down of the wartery [sic] elements from above” (Heller 1862). The strong winds that could accompany storms caused still more problems. Tents were commonly blown down and collapsed onto the occupants, who had to extricate themselves from the wet canvas and were left exposed to the falling rain.
Men found themselves soaked when they had to march, occupy field fortifications, or fight in rainstorms, but a much greater problem was the wet weather’s impact on the terrain, turning the soil into gooey mud. The remarkably deep mud encountered by soldiers stemmed from the clayey soil composition of large portions of the South. Reflecting the thoughts of countless troops, Maine Private John Haley complained in June 1863 during the Gettysburg Campaign, “It commenced to rain in fine old Virginia style, and in less than an hour the road was a mass of liquid mud up to, even over, our ankles in many places” (Silliker 1985). With most of the roads in the South composed of dirt, marching men had to trudge through various depths of mud whenever it rained. Marching through mud was exhausting, and men struggled to maintain their footing, regularly slipping, sliding, and stumbling and even becoming stuck (Figure 2).
On the battlefield, muddy terrain made it challenging for troops to maneuver and engage the enemy, with the side on the offensive usually at the disadvantage because the nature of their operations required greater mobility than the side fighting on the defensive, which could remain more stationary. For example, at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House in May 1864, a Mississippi private recalled: “Soon the Yanks made a determined charge with fixed bayonets, but the mud fought for us. Many of them were shot dead and sank down on the breastworks without pulling their feet out of the mud” (Cockrell and Ballard 1995). Besides the mud, wet weather could have a devastating effect on firearms, rendering them faulty or even inoperable in various military actions. In some engagements, pervasive wetness caused troops’ weapons to misfire, preventing them from offering serious resistance to their opponents. At Spotsylvania for instance, an attacking Federal force was able to overrun a salient in the enemy defensive line because many of the Confederates could not blunt the U.S. assault due to their rain-impaired muskets (Figure 3).
References
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1997 To My Beloved Wife and Boy at Home: The Letters and Diaries of Orderly Sergeant John F.L. Hartwell. Associated University Presses, London. - Cockrell, Thomas D., and Michael B. Ballard, editors.
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1887 Battle of Spottsylvania [sic]. Library of Congress, Geography and Maps Division, Washington, D.C. Electronic document, https://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/90712278/, accessed May 2024.
This article was originally published in June 2024 by Dovetail Cultural Resource Group, a Mead & Hunt company.
