Camp furniture on campaign

[Charles Heath]

Re: Camp furniture on campaign

"... sitting on a box at Fair Oaks."

Soon to be the site of a heck of a lot of burnt rations, too. Context. Context.

[Horace]

Re: Camp furniture on campaign

Charles - you are deft about where you put your initials on gear. I keep finding them.
Joe - I totally get you. Confederates in the Vicksburg campaign is a different thing, of course. Petersburg, Federals at Nashville, officers anywhere. I think people were mostly just referring to the generic tableau.
Gordon Rhea talks about U.S. troops dug in at the North Anna who were within yards of the house of a prominently secessionist minister's abandoned house. They trashed it and carried all sorts of ludicrous stuff into the works: paintings, chairs, tables. Everyone had three books to read etc. They used a piano as part of the breastworks. It was fascinating, in a guilty way, to read about this wanton vandalism and trench furnishing. They probably had oriental rugs and 100 pounds of iron gimracks scattered around too. But they left them there.
At the end of 'One Of Jackson's Foot Cavalry' there is an amazing record of how far they went on every day's march. I think they went 27 miles a day two days in a row once, but I was surprised to learn that sometimes they went less than five miles a day for a week, and there were days when they didn't march at all, while on campaign. They may well have accrued some furniture of one sort or another on these uncommon breaks. I was just ranting about the modern display of a ton of stuff in a generic setting and feeling like 'Leave it out altogether. It didn't happen enough to warrant it.'

[Charles Heath]

Re: Camp furniture on campaign

Charles - you are deft about where you put your initials on gear. I keep finding them.

Todd,

Part of the fun of those trash piles was including items that still had some life left in them. The pile by the wagon axle near the slippery slope to the sinks had quite a bit of worn out harness with some excellent roller buckles. A bright lad would have immediately recognized the 1839 model cartridge box buckles, and some of the more plain variety on the driving harness. The Japan finish was long gone, and they may as well have been raw. The remains of those wood hooped barrels in the larger trash pile by the Sgt. Major's hut (near Coldfoot's cookhouse) turned out to be very useful, although no one seemed to want to make a pair of stave skis. I can't imagine why. Unless Scott, Dennis, Pete, Craig, and Coldfoot cleaned up those trash piles, they may still be sitting there in camp. Ah, such are the slowly dimming memories of yet another truly fun event.

One of the underutilized websites is the NPS 384 project, and part of that website contains "campaigns." This is a way of thinking somewhat different from the norm, and provides links and nodes rather than just "battle" nodes:

http://www.nps.gov/hps/abpp/battles/bycampgn.htm

In fact, the 1863 "Pacific Campaign" may be of interest. :p

At the end of 'One Of Jackson's Foot Cavalry' there is an amazing record of how far they went on every day's march. I think they went 27 miles a day two days in a row once, but I was surprised to learn that sometimes they went less than five miles a day for a week, and there were days when they didn't march at all, while on campaign.

Worsham left 19 pages of marches, barge rides, train rides, and mileage (where known) at the rear of that fine book. One example would be March 22-24, where they marched 27, 26, and 23 miles during those three days. He mentions "camp on road side" quite often, too. Just happened to have that book out doing some research for a future event....

Still, documenation exists for men who carried stoves or cast iron dogs hither and yon. Creature comforts!