Furlough Impression

[J. Donaldson]

I will be attending an event in a few weeks, and I'm having some difficulty finding the answer to a research question, including trying to search this site. What issued items would a soldier have with them while on leave from their regiment? A firearm would have been turned in, but what about leather accouterments? I've seen enough peripherally to believe that knapsack, haversack and canteen would have traveled with the soldier, but would that be it?

I've got passes covered, but I wasn't sure if I was missing anything.

Thank you for your help in advance.

[CompanyWag]

Re: Furlough Impression

I think you are on the right track...uniform, haversack, canteen and knapsack if the soldier had one. I think your hunch that accouterments would have been left with the rifle muskets is correct. Here is an interesting photo incorrectly id'd as Confederate prisoners in Chattanooga, 1864. Personally, I think it looks more like federal veterans during the winter of `64 going on furlough, waiting for trains north. Notice they appear to only be carrying haversacks, canteens and knapsacks.

http://www.shorpy.com/node/4840

[Andy Ackeret]

Re: Furlough Impression

Bob,

Your logic is leading you the right way.

Let me point out an article written by Michael Schaffner, and posted here on the A/C that will be a huge help to you. Don't let the name fool you, there is a section devoted to "who owns what" when it comes to an enlisted man's gear.

http://www.authentic-campaigner.com/...t=School+clerk

[GreencoatCross]

Re: Furlough Impression

I'm aware of only one account of a Federal soldier taking his rifle home on furlough and he specifically mentions that the re-enlisted soldiers were allowed to do so because they met the requisite number to be classified a veteran regiment. In "The Civil War Diary of Wyman S. White, Co. F 2nd United States Sharpshooters" White himself states the following:

"...went directly to the Soldier's Rest at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Depot and stacked our arms, as we were allowed to carry our arms and equipment home with us, having enough enlistments to be classed a veteran regiment." pg. 211

"Wilson and I slung our knapsacks, shouldered our rifles and started for our fathers' homes." pg.217

"I stood there in uniform with my knapsack and other equipment in place and my rifle in hand." pg. 217

"My brother Reuben would think me minus if I had not turned out hunting and fishing with him and I must acknowledge that I enjoyed that part too. He was quite expert with the shot gun and my breech loading rifle seemed quite a magnet to him and he wanted to try target shooting with it."

There is another account from this same furlough period that I can't pass up sharing in which a member of White's company stole several canteens, filled them with alcohol, and wore them with his waist belt securing the canteen straps. He hoarded the booze for himself but the victims "made it so hot for him" that he sold their canteens and contents back to them for fifty cents a piece!

[GreencoatCross]

Re: Furlough Impression

Paul,

I thought the same thing about that photograph as well. Someone pointed out to me once that they appear to be "under guard" by the two seated/armed soldiers at left. I don't know if they are supposed to be guards or not but I've read several contemporary accounts of large groups on furlough traveling through railroad hubs, cities, fortifications, etc. commonly placed under guard to prevent damage to property, theft, desertion, among other reasons. This also seems to have happened with convalesced soldiers being "distributed" back to their regiments in the field. Would make an intriguing event....

[J. Donaldson]

Re: Furlough Impression

Thank you all for your help. The canteen situation is interesting to say the least. Andy, thanks for passing the link along. I appreciate this very much.

[cprljohnivey]

Re: Furlough Impression

Cpl Si Klegg drew a new suit of cloths on his furlough. http://books.google.com/books?id=23A...page&q&f=false


Thankee, Doctor,"said Si. He could not say more than that. For the first time he knew that he was going home. Up to this moment it had been only a dim unreality. He had so fully identified himself with the 200th Indiana, and so completely given himself up to the discharge of his whole duty as a soldier, that he had been perfectly sincere in the expression of his preference to remain with the regiment. It had been deemed best that he should go, and now a flood of tender thoughts rushed upon him. There were symptoms that his emotions would get the mastery for the moment, and he dropped back a little till he should recover his composure. As he came to a full realization of the privilege he was to enjoy, a happiness filled his heart that he had not felt for many a month.
When the town was reached and the wounded had been temporarily cared for, the surgeon made the necessary arrangements to enable Si to "draw" some clothing, and HE WOULD NOT WAIT.
the latter was soon arrayed in an entire new outfit, from sole to crown. •
"I don't suppose," said the doctor with a suggestive wink, "that you care to take your old clothes home- do you?'
"Not much!'' said Si. "If mother sh'd examine 'em with her specs on she'd go crazy. I'll jest burn 'em up. That's all they's fit fer."
Si learned, upon inquiry, that a train would leave that evening and he told the surgeon he believed he would start right off.
"You had better get a good sleep and go in the morning," said the doctor. "You need the rest and you'll have a hard time of it bumping around in those rough cars all night."
"I won't mind that a bit," replied Si, "'s long's I'm goin' to'rd God's country. It 'll give me that much more time to hum. It's a chance a feller don't have very often, 'n' I'm goin' ter git all ther' is in it."
The surgeon admitted the force of this reasoning and made no further objection. Carefully dressing Si's wound, he gave him a liberal supply of such things as it was likely to need during the long journey. He told him that anybody would help him whenever he wanted to change the dressing of his arm. Then he replenished Si's haversack and bade him a warm good-by.
The train was composed of empty freight cars that had come down loaded with supplies for the army. The only passengers were the usual detail of guards and a few furloughed men and officers who, like Corporal Klegg, were impatient to be off. The severely wounded who had come in the ambulances would rest till the following day and then be loaded in cars of the same kind and sent northward.
Si and a dozen others, mostly wounded men, were assigned to a car. and by assisting one another they managed, after much effort, to clamber in. The car had been used, at no remote period, for the transportation of cattle, and little had been done in the way of disinfection. An over-fastidious person might have been disposed to grumble at such unsavory accommodations; but Si Klegg, with a furlough in his blouse pocket and his face turned homeward, was as happy while breathing the noxious odors of that cattle-car as if his nostrils were being tickled by the "spicy breezes" that
"Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle."
Just before the train started, a man—whose bearing justified the belief that he already had a title, in fee simple, to a good part of the earth, and wanted the rest— jumped into the car and bustled around among the soldiers. With notebook and pencil in hand, he took down the name and regiment of each, and the nature of his wound.
"What's your name, young fellow ?" he said, with a patronizing air.
"My name's Si Klegg,
sir." THE WAR CORRESPONDENT.
"What! Corporal Si Klegg, of the 200th Indiana?" "Bet yer life I'm him."
"What! The man that so grandly bore aloft, amidst the awful carnage, the star-bespangled emblem of liberty and equal rights and planted it on the ramparts of treason, 510

[J. Donaldson]

Re: Furlough Impression

After looking through or discussing the sources presented here in the forum, I did something I should have done to start; I went to the army regulations. Quoth the book:

"191. Soldiers on furlough shall not take with them their arms or accoutrements." - Revised Regulations for the Army of the United States, 1861 (1862). Page 34.

So sayeth the Army. When you look in the wrong places, you don't find the answer you need. While not everyone went by the book, this is where I should have started. Thank you for all your help.

[BobSullivanPress]

Re: Furlough Impression

Ordnance equipment is owned by the government, and is the responsibility of the commanding officer.
Clothing is considered part of the soldler's pay, and is owned by the soldier. There are annual allowences of clothing, and, if not drawn, the solder is entitled to extra pay.
All other equipment is issued one time to the soldier, and belongs to the soldier. Quartermaster equipment can be turned back in to the quartermaster, and proper receipts obtained.

All of this is in the regulations. So basically, if you went home, the ordnance stuff stayed with your unit, the clothing went with you, and the rest of it (canteen, haversack, etc.) was taken or turned in at your discretion.