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Transcriber's Note

  Footnote 194: Missing reference page number.

  Footnotes have been placed at end of their respective chapter.

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         A STUDY OF ARMY CAMP LIFE DURING AMERICAN REVOLUTION

                                  BY
                           MARY HAZEL SNUFF
                  B. S. North-Western College, 1917.

                                THESIS
     Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
                               Degree of
                            MASTER OF ARTS
                              IN HISTORY
                                  IN
                          THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
                                OF THE
                        UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
                                 1918




[Illustration]




TABLE OF CONTENTS


                                       Page

  INTRODUCTION                            1

  Chapter I
      HOUSING CONDITIONS                  4

  Chapter II
      FOOD AND CLOTHING                  15

  Chapter III
      HEALTH AND SANITATION              27

  Chapter IV
      RECREATION IN CAMP                 37

  Chapter V
      RELIGION IN THE CAMP               46

  Chapter VI
      CAMP DUTIES AND DISCIPLINE         54

      BIBLIOGRAPHY                       64




INTRODUCTION


The object of this study is to produce a picture of the private soldier
of the American Revolution as he lived, ate, was punished, played,
and worshiped in the army camp. Drawing that picture not only from
the standpoint of the continental congress, the body which made the
rules and regulations for governing the army, or from the officer's
view point as they issued orders from headquarters rather just a
study of the soldier himself in the camp conditions and his reaction
to them. It was easy for congress to determine the rations or for
the commander-in-chief to issue orders about housing conditions and
sanitation, but the opportunities for obeying those orders were not
always the best. It is just that fact, not what was intended, but what
happened, that is to be discussed.

The soldier in camp is an aspect of the Revolutionary War which has
been taken up only in a very general way by writers of that period of
history, except perhaps the conditions at Valley Forge, for at least
their terrible side is quite generally known. Charles Knowles Bolton
has studied the private soldier under Washington[1], but has emphasized
other phases of the soldier's life than those taken up in this study.

The material has been gathered mostly from letters, journals, orderly
books, and diaries of the officers and privates, written while in camp.
The difficulty confronted has been to get the diaries of the private
soldier. They have either not been published or if they have been
published they have been edited in such a way as to make them useless
for a study of social conditions in camp, the emphasis having been
placed on the military operations and tactics rather than the every day
incidents in the soldier's life.

The soldier has been studied after he went into camp. Little has been
said about the conditions which led to the war or the conditions as
they were before the struggle began except as they are used to explain
existing facts. It has been the plan in most of the chapters to give a
brief resume of the plans made by congress or the commander-in-chief
for the working out of that particular part of the organization, then
to describe the conditions as they really were.

There has been no attempt made, for it would be an almost impossible
task, to give a picture of the life in all the camps but rather the
more representative phases have been described or conditions in general
have been discussed.

The first phase of camp life considered is that of the housing
conditions, the difficulties encountered, the description of the huts,
the method of construction, and the furnishing. This is followed in the
second chapter with a study of the food and clothing, the supply and
scarcity of those necessities. The third chapter will have to do with
the health and sanitation of the soldier while encamped, the hospital
system, the number sick, the diseases most prevalent and the means
of prevention. The soldier's leisure time will be the subject of the
fourth chapter, the sort of recreation he had been in the habit of at
home and the ways he found of amusing himself in camp conditions. The
soldier's religion forms the subject matter of the fifth chapter, the
influence of the minister before the war, his place in the army, the
religious exercises in camp and their effect upon the individual and
the war in general. The last chapter will in a way be a recapitulation
of all that has gone before by drawing a picture of a day with a
soldier in camp emphasizing the discipline and duties of camp life.

[Footnote 1: Bolton, _The Private Soldier Under Washington_.]




Chapter I

HOUSING CONDITIONS


The war was on, the Lexington and Concord fray was over, Paul Revere
had made his memorable ride, and the young patriots with enthusiasm
at white heat were swarming from village and countryside leaving
their work and homes. Where they were going they did not know, they
were going to fight with little thought of where they were to live
or what they were to eat and wear. There was a continental congress
but it had little authority and the fact was that very few members
of that mushroom growth army even felt that they were fighting for a
confederation for in their minds they were for the various states,
and it was to the various states they looked for support and it was
to those states that the honors were to go. It was not until the
day before the battle of Bunker Hill that congress had appointed a
commander-in-chief and it was almost a month later when Washington took
command in Boston. There was an army of sixteen thousand men mostly
from the New England States strengthened by about three thousand from
the more southern states during the next month[2]. It was more nearly a
mob