James Madison Stone - Personal Recollections of the Civil War: By One Who Took Part in It as a Private Soldier in the 21st Volunteer Regiment of Infantry from Massachusetts

This volume does not claim to be a tactical, or strategic history of the campaigns of which it treats; it aims rather to be a narrative of the every-day life and experience of the private soldier in camp and fieldhow he lived, how he marched, how he fought and how he suffered. No sooner had some of the volunteers reached the front, and been subjected to the hardships and exposures of army life, than they fell sick, were sent to the hospital and were discharged without passing through any serious campaigns. Others were wounded early, were disabled and were never able to return to their regiments. The more fortunate passed sound and unscathed through battle after battle and campaign after campaign through the whole war. Three years of active campaigning and a year in the hospital was the allotment of the writer, who thus was in the service from the beginning to the end of the war.

Whatever the merits or demerits of this work may be, the impressions and the composition are my own. They are an elaboration of notes made during the war and directly after it, following which, it has taken the form of a diary.

The part of the work which has been least interesting, consumed more time and required some research, has been in fixing the dates when the different incidents occurred, they having passed entirely from memory long ago. With these few words, the work is submitted by the writer to his comrades of those four eventful and trying years, when the life of the Republic hung in the balance, in the hope that it may be an aid in calling to mind fading recollections of pleasant incidents, as well as heroic deeds performed by comrades.

Leaving Camp Lincoln for the front. At Baltimore, Maryland. Cantaloupes and Peaches. Annapolis, Maryland. Chesapeake Bay oysters. Assisting negroes to escape. Doing picket duty on the railroad. A Negro husking. Chaplain Ball arrives from Massachusetts. Assigned to the 2d Brigade, 2d Division, 9th Army Corps.

During the winter of 1860 and 1861 there was great uneasiness felt in the North. The South, through the democratic party, had been the ruling section of the country most of the time since the establishment of the Republic, but at the time of the election in the autumn of 1860 a northern political party had won. That party was not only a northern party, but it was an abolition party. The election of an abolition president, Mr. Lincoln, by the North, was at once regarded as a menace to the slave holding interests of the South, which section at once began to make preparations to withdraw from the Union. As the spring months passed and Mr. Lincoln, the new president, took his seat, secession was more and more talked about. Soon the 6th Massachusetts Regiment was attacked in Baltimore. Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was fired upon. Battalion after battalion of the state militia were being hurried away south for the protection of the Capitol. It thus became more and more apparent that there was to be war, and the all-important question from the northern viewpoint was, the preservation of the Union. One Sunday in the month of June I went home to visit my family, I being at the time at work away from home, and while there, quietly asked my mother what she would say if I should enlist. Well, that question produced a shock, and was not answered as quietly as it was asked. I was told I could not enlist without her consent, which she should not give, and I was heartily laughed at by my brothers and sisters. However, when it became known that a company was being recruited at Barre, I went quietly over there and enlisted, then I went home and told the family what I had done. There was a rumpus, of course, but it passed off, and after a few days, hearing nothing from the company, I decided to go back to work again and await developments. On the 22d I learned that the company was going into camp at Worcester the next day. I was on hand and went along.

A number of stage-coaches were provided to take us to Worcester. It was an interesting and picturesque ride of a little more than twenty miles. Arriving in Worcester early in the afternoon, we went to the Agricultural Fair Grounds, which had been converted into a campground and named Camp Lincoln from Levi Lincoln, the first mayor of Worcester and a Governor of Massachusetts, and set to work putting up tents and forming a company street. Sleeping in tents, drilling and doing guard duty seemed strange at first, and was a good deal of a change from the duties of a farmers boy, but it was interesting to be among a lot of live young men who were brimful of enthusiasm, patriotism and fun.

When I joined the company at Barre, I was surprised to discover a number of Dana boys there: Henry Billings, Henry Haskins, German Lagara, Gil Warner and Harding Witt. Harding Witt and I had been schoolmates and good friends for a number of years, so I was especially glad to find Harding there. Reveille was sounded at five oclock. Most of the boys did not find it difficult to get up at that time but a few of those boys made the greatest ado about getting up on the minute. They were very likely boys who had always been called by loving mothers and had been called two or three times every morning. A quarter of an hour after reveille every man had to turn out to roll call. The men thus had fifteen minutes to dress and put their tents in order. At six oclock the breakfast signal was sounded and all fell in line to go to the cook-house and get their breakfasts. The cup and plate furnished by the government were of tin, much like those I remember having seen children use in early boyhood. They were expected to stand the rough usage of army life. Knives, forks and spoons were of the same rude character. Pedlers, however, early appeared in camp with a combination, the three hooking together and making a very light, portable and convenient thing to carry, and many of the boys bought and carried them in preference to those furnished by the government. Some of the rations were served out to the men, as soon as received from the Commissary Department, such as sugar, salt, bread and salt pork. Other things like corned beef, beans and coffee were cooked by the company cook and served at meal times hot. Soft bread, a very good kind of wheat bread, was furnished at convenient times when we were in camp, at other times we received the regular army crackers. These were sometimes, during the first year, very poor; they had doubtless been in the government storehouses a long time, but later on when we received fresh crackers they were very palatable.

At eight oclock every morning the surgeons call was sounded and any man who did not feel well could go and see the doctor, perhaps get excused from duty, get some pills or some quinine to take, or, if sick, be given a bed in the hospital. Although I spent nearly the entire year in the hospital (the last year of my service, after being wounded in July, 1864), previous to that time I only once answered the surgeons call and that was when every man in the regiment was ordered up to the surgeons tent and given a dose of quinine and whiskey. This was while we were at Newbern, North Carolina, when chills and fever were prevalent in the regiment. At nine oclock in the evening tattoo was sounded, the signal for all soldiers to repair to their quarters, and fifteen minutes later taps gave the signal for all lights to be extinguished. This living in accordance with military regulation, seemed a little strange and reminded the writer of the time when he lived in a factory village where a bell sounded the time to get up, where one is rung into the factory and rung out again, suggesting a kind of life where a man becomes simply a cog in a wheel.