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CHAPTER XVII

From Chancellorsville to Gettysburg—­Camp, March, and Battle.

Again we are in our old quarters.  Details were sent out every day to gather up the broken and captured guns, to be shipped to Richmond for repairs.  The soldiers had gathered a great amount of camp supplies, such as oil cloths, tents, blankets, etc.  When a soldier captured more than a sufficiency for his own wants, he would either sell to his comrades or to the brigade sutler.  This was a unique personage with the soldiers.  He kept for sale such articles as the soldier mostly needed, and always made great profits on his goods.  Being excused from military duty, he could come and go at will.  But the great danger was of his being captured or his tent raided by his own men, the risk therefore being so great that he had to ask exorbitant prices for his goods.  He kept crackers, cards, oysters and sardines, paper and envelopes, etc., and often a bottle; would purchase all the plunder brought him and peddle the same to citizens in the rear.  After the battle of Chancellorsville a member of Company D, from Spartanburg, took the sutler an oil cloth to buy.  After the trade was effected, the sutler was seen to throw the cloth behind a box in the tent.  Gathering some of his friends, to keep the man of trade engaged in front, the oil cloth man would go in the rear, raise the tent, extract the oil cloth, take it around, and sell it again.  Paying over the money, the sutler would throw the cloth behind the box, and continue his trade with those in front.  Another would go behind the tent, get the cloth, bring it to the front, throw it upon the counter, and demand his dollar.  This was kept up till everyone had sold the oil cloth once, and sometimes twice, but at last the old sutler began to think oil cloths were coming in too regularly, so he looked behind the box, and behold he had been buying the same oil cloth all night.  The office was abolished on our next campaign.

Lee began putting his army in splendid trim.  All furloughs were discontinued and drills (six per week) were now begun.  To an outsider this seemed nonsensical and an useless burden upon the soldiers, but to a soldier nothing is more requisite to the discipline and morale of an army than regular drills, and the army given a good share of what is called “red tape.”  By the last of May, or the first of June, Lee had recruited his army, by the non-extension of all furloughs and the return of the slightly wounded, to sixty-eight thousand.  It is astonishing what a very slight wound will cause a soldier to seek a furlough.  He naturally thinks that after the marches, danger, and dread of battle, a little blood drawn entitles him to at least a thirty days’ furlough.  It became a custom in the army for a man to compute the length of his furlough by the extent of his wound.  The very least was thirty days, so when a soldier was asked the nature of his wound he would reply, “only a thirty days’,” or “got this time a sixty days;” while with an arm or foot off he would say, “I got my discharge” at such battle.