Mayfield Civil War Fort

Civil War soldiers in camp lived amid boredom, fear, mischief, disease, and death as thousands of young men, many far from family farms or urban neighborhoods for the first time, crowded into makeshift camps where disease spread easily and sanitary conditions were often inadequate. Most lived in tents year-round, though Confederates built crude wooden huts during the winter of 1861-1862. Much of each day went to military drill, finding clean water, mending clothes, digging latrine trenches, and gathering wood for cooking and heat. Their diet consisted mostly of salt pork, dried beans, corn bread, and hardtack, with occasional food from home, and coffee was the most important staple. Even with heavy work, they found time for recreation through music, reading, letter writing, religious reflection, and games such as baseball, cards, boxing matches, and cockfights, while also betting on moving objects, bowling at ten-pins with cannon balls, whittling sticks, carving soapstone pipes, and talking about war and hopes of returning home.

Manassas, Virginia · United States