Shortly after Bell Irvin Wiley penned The Life of Johnny Reb, a social history of southern soldiery, he wondered: what about the other fellows? What brought them to the colors, pulled them away from lives of comfort to march thousands of miles over the course of years, risking death by minié ball — or more commonly, disease? The result is The Life of Billy Yank, a social history of Union soldiers, that largely ignores politics to focus on the men and their day-to-day life. Although the author’s sympathies lie more readily with his first subject — Union soldiers are always Yankees, Yanks, or Federals — he does not downplay soldiers’ suffering or humanity here. This was a delightfully deep dive into the camps of those that wore the blue from the man who evidently pioneered social histories of the Civil War: his other works include studies on blacks during the war, as well as Confederate Women. He even addresses the immigrant-soldier experience to some degree: they composed a quarter of the Union army and were mostly German and Irish.

Billy Yank is divided into topics like combat, illness and death, recreation, and morality. Before getting into the lives of soldiers, though, Wiley first visits the motivations of those who volunteered. The overwhelming motive appears to have been simple patriotism — indignation that the Stars and Stripes had been fired upon at Fort Sumter, and determination to squash those who had done it. There were those who expressed a hatred of slavery and a desire to end it, including one soldier who vowed he didn’t care about the Union so long as slavery was destroyed. These appear to be a distinct minority in the early years of the war, though, just as McPherson’s study indicated. Many Yankees evinced outright loathing of the Southerners and the South, viewing the unindustrialized land as primitive and its residents as barbarians. The majority of the book addresses aspects of a soldier’s life: the boredom and terror of campaign life, resentment towards officers, camp conditions and recreation, cooking, and matters of morality. (Bored soldiers often found recourse in liquor and gambling when they were not doing more wholesome things like singing and playing baseball.)

Because the ranks of the Army swelled so quickly, both officers and enlisted men were typically amateur. Officers attended classes in camp at night after the day’s drilling was done, and some studied handbooks on tactics and drill in their free time. Medical reviews of recruits being mustered in were so cursory that numerous women who passed for boys made it into the ranks: some were found out when they were shot, but one lived as a man until 1911 when an auto accident exposed her. The Union army was fairly tolerant of this, even granting pensions to some women who served despite shifting them from infantry to support positions like nursing.The amateur status of the citizen-soldiery also led to massive insubordination issues, since the men were not soldiers by disposition, nor by training. Not only did they not know the many regulations they were breaking in those first few months of service, they didn’t care — and if they had access to liquor, they were violently expressive about communicating their disdain for jumped-up sergeant and officers. Wiley quotes liberally from soldiers’ letters, enough to give an idea for the period’s chaotic spelling. I especially enjoyed the chapter on the music soldiers played and invented to pass the time. I was surprised to read in the chapter on camp food and cooking that the Union army distributed “dessicated vegetables” — or as the soldiers who tried to eat them preferred, “desecrated vegetables”. They were only edible if used in a stew and boiled so long their nutritional value disappeared. Some officers who were courteous mind find themselves invited to eat in southern homes; many enlisted who were not courteous simply stole geese, chickens, and pigs and claimed with straight faces that said livestock had evinced rebel sympathies by hissing at the Union army or the Grand Old Flag.

This was quite an engaging and fun read: while I consider myself fairly versed in this subject there were still a lot of surprises, and Wiley is a talented and thorough writer. This is excellent stuff.

Related:
The Life of Johnny Reb, Bell I. Wiley
For Cause and Comrade, James McPherson

Another Yank of five weeks’ service featured by long marches complained: “If there is anything particularly attractive in marching from 10 to 20 miles a day under a scorching sun with a good mule load, and sinking up to one’s knees in the ‘Sacred Soil’ at each Step, my mind is not of a sufficiently poetic nature to appreciate it.”

“The surgeon insisted on Sending me to the hospital for treatment. I insisted on takeing the field and prevailed — thinking that I had better die by rebel bullets than Union Quackery.”

In the Federal forces four persons died of sickness for every one killed in battle, and deaths from disease were twice those resulting from other known causes.It is a sad fact of Civil War history that more men died of loosening of the bowels than fell on the field of combat.

Of a Virginia belle a New York soldier wrote “She might have been a smart girl but, but she has never done anything but read novels.”

The officer approached a wounded man with the expectation of rceiving a last message for a loved one, but instead was asked, “Colonel, is the day ours?” “Yes”, responded the officer. “Then I am willing to die,” was the soldier’s reply.