"Rat is not so bad."

Monday, March 13, 1865, in trenches near the home of Mr. Boisseau

Just when we are at the end of our endurance, just when the cold, the starvation and the nakedness strip us all of any feelings of sustaining the cause, there happens something that lifts our spirits and will us to carry on a little longer. We are being issued new uniforms.

Exacting what has happened to cause this great fortune to fall upon us we know not and nor shall we question it. The issues will be continue for the next few days we are told until all of us look as new as fresh fish. All of first squad have new jackets, including myself. Mine has a distinct blue tinge to it but I do not care. It appears to be of English manufacture. There are shoulder straps, brass buttons and trousers to match. We are not going to know what to do without our ventilated trousers.

We were told to get rid of our old uniforms after removing anything useful. As my only shirt was not so bad, I kept it but did not tell anyone. I was issued two new ones so now I have three. There will be clean drawers for the entire company, nay, the entire regiment. Fine black slouch hats rest atop every head.All of us are sporting a new pair of brogans. They are new and will need to be broken in. I think that I may boil and eat my old ones.

Can better rations be far behind? If not, it will be all right. The weather is warming and the snow has gone but the rain never ceases. Some wild plants are beginning to come up. We do not, we can not wait for the full maturity of said plants. Once we see them, they go straight into the stew pot.

There are many rats to chose from. They are everywhere and into everything. They appeared soon after the army started building these works last summer. They are very bold. One crawled up Hunter's leg the other night as he was writing a letter home. This rat, whom we took for a Yankee rat as a good Confederate rat would never be so rude as to interject himself into this situation. This rat perched himself on Hunter's leg and stared at him. Just stared at him. While Hunter fixed its' attention on himself, Vincent beat it to death with a bayonet. Rat is not so bad. We have had several. They taste best with wild onions and salt but the latter is in short supply.

This image is from the First World War. Rats were common to all trench warfare.

Terry said in no uncertain terms that he would absolutely not eat rat. Instead, he has visited the cavalry corrals where he says that a decent meal of corn can be had with some work by taking the corn after the horses had finished with it. We did not ask any questions.

The schedule for picket duty has been changed. Instead of each regiment in the brigade providing details to man the brigade front picket line, one regiment, in rotation, goes out to man the entire line. The Twelfth has just returned from such duty. Our cabins and our works were occupied by another regiment in order to protect our part of the line in our absence. They left us without any firewood and not much of anything else. Someday, it will be their turn to pull picket duty and our turn to pillage them.

From the Library of Congress

Union pickets manning a forward position at Petersburg.

Denton is gone as is Howell, Marshall, and Nelson. We believe that some of us may get a furlough. We had better not find these four rascals in Richmond.


I Send You These Few Lines

The home of Joseph Boisseau during the war. Known currently as, "Tudor Hall." During the siege of Petersburg, this home served as the headquarters of McGowan's brigade.

The, "Ragged Rebel," is a concept that has been generally accepted as truth since the end of the War Between the States. The typical Confederate soldier, particularly  towards the end of the war , was shoeless, had multiple holes in his trousers, if he had trousers, and wore a jacket held together by its' patches. Some Johnnies did, indeed, look like this image in some places and at some times. The same holds true for his Billy Yank counterpart. In the past 25-30 years, this image has been challenged as not quite accurate.

Take, for instance, the Army of Northern Virginia during the last months of the war. Confederate Quartermaster records show that the following items were issued to Lee's army during the period July 1, 1864 through January 31, 1865:

104,199 jackets
157,727 shirts
74,851 blankets
140,570 trousers
170,139 drawers
27,011 hats and caps
167,862 pairs of shoes
146,136 pairs of socks
21,063 flannel shirts
4,861 overcoats

These figures demonstrate that during that period, each Confederate soldier was issued at least two new uniforms and two new blankets with some left over. Not everyone received new headwear or an overcoat but the basics were amply represented.

Terry may have an aversion to eating rat but seems to have no qualms about eating corn for the horses after it has been eaten by them, picking out undigested kernels.

Several times during the course of this blog, I have drawn the reader's attention to the matter of documentation, or, sometimes, the lack thereof. It has already been mentioned in prior postings that Confederate service records become almost absent during the last 5-6 months of the war. In some cases, the best documentable sources come from the Union side. Tooms has made diary entries about deserters. We know they deserted because the records of the Provost Marshall of the Union Army of the Potomac verify this.

In a previous post, under the, "Few Lines," section, I have mentioned that in combing the service records of Company I, 12th South Carolina Infantry Regiment, I have assembled a list of company members who disappear from the records and do not appear at the surrender at Appomattox. Given the wartime conditions of the period, this should not be surprising. One would expect these soldiers to appear in the Union enemy deserter records. Some, like Dennis Castles, do.

And some do not. Tooms refers in this latest diary entry to four fellow soldiers in his company. They are J.W. Denton, Thomas Howell, James Marshall and John B. Nelson. All four of them have disappeared from both Confederate and Union records. Did they desert to the enemy? There's nothing on the Union side to verify this. Did they simply pack up and head for home and not the Union lines? That's my guess but it is only a guess as I have no evidence to go on. That they disappeared is a given. The reason why is unknown. That is why they are listed as being gone and not as having deserted.

The change in picket duty comes from J.F.J. Caldwell, the brigade historian. Caldwell began writing the history at Joseph Boisseau's home during the siege.