Originally aired on June 12, 1998 - In part 198 of our Civil War series, Virginia Tech history professor James Robertson describes the logistics and cumbersome nature of a Civil War march.
#198 – Marches
Watching a Civil War army on the march was an unforgettable sight. The idea of fifty thousand to a hundred thousand soldiers moving in the same direction down the same four or five roads and accompanied by countless support elements was an awesome thing for a farmers turned soldiers to behold. David Thompson of the 9th New York was such an observer. He characterized the Union Army of the Potomac on the move this way, “the gathering of such a multitude is a swarm. Its march a vast migration. It fills up every road with long ammunition and supply trains disposed for safety along the inner roads. Infantry and artillery next in order outwardly. Feelers of cavalry all along its front and far out on its flank. While behind trailing along for miles are the rabble of stragglers. Laggards through sickness or exhaustion. Squads of recruits. Convalescents from the hospitals.”
“Stand beside the road and watch a corps pass,’ a Billy Yank declared. “The men march route step, that is, not keeping time and four abreast as the country road seldom permits a greater width. If the march is just begun you hear the sound of voices everywhere with roars of laughter in spots. Later on, when the weight of knapsack and musket begins to tell these sounds die out. A sense of weariness and labor rises from the toiling masses streaming by voiced only by the shuffle of a multitude of feet. The rubbing and straining of innumerable straps and the flop of full canteens, so uniformly does the mass move on that it suggests a great machine. In the distance no motion was perceptible, but the line motion could be inferred from the casual glint of sunlight on the musket barrel miles away. Each column a monstrous crawling blue black snake miles long, quilted with the silver slant of muskets at a shoulder arms. Its sluggish tail twisting slowly up over the distant ridge.”
The time it took to prepare for a march depended on the military strategy involved, the miles to be traveled that day, the weather, road conditions, and how far or near the enemy was. Speed of preparation was essential. One soldier declared, “I can strike my tent, roll my coat, fold my blanket and tent, pack them in my knapsack and fasten the coat on the top, put on my harness and be in readiness to move at any time in ten minutes which I think is doing pretty well.”
Marching was no fun. For most soldiers the worst aspect was stop and go. The accordion-like way the march normally went. A Vermont volunteer noted of the march to Gettysburg, “it took all night to march about seven miles. Marching by rods is like dying by inches and it gets an impatient man in misery. Scolding and swearing is dispensed at an awful rate when the regiment is compelled to halt and wait every few rods. We rarely halted long enough to sit down, but if we did the column would invariably start just as we were fairly seated. Men fell out whole companies at a time. Some companies took a vote to stop and all fell out, officers and men. Our colonel said that he rode on until his men all left him and he found himself without a command when he concluded that he would stop too.”
The shapeless shoes worn in 1861 added to the discomfort. One of the major legacies of the Civil War came when some unknown boot maker decided to mold one shoe for the left foot and the other for the right foot. That was the birth of pairs of shoes. So much a part of life that we never wonder where and when the innovation began.