Civil War Camps and Soldier Health

The Civil War was a watershed in public awareness of the many challenges to soldier health posed by camp life. Sanitarians among civilians and regular army officers attempted to meet those challenges by addressing a range of topics associated with preventive health care in the volunteer army. The U.S. Sanitary Commission, a non-governmental agency sanctioned by the Federal government, created a massive campaign to study conditions in semi-permanent camps and advise unit commanders how to avoid unnecessary illness and curb soldier deaths by disease. Commission inspectors, mostly civilian physicians, examined camps from 1861 to early 1864 and filed more than 1400 reports of their findings. Civil War Camps and Soldier Health delves deeply into 280 of those reports, shedding new and startling light on camp conditions. Addressing camp situation, shelter, clothing, personal cleanliness, garbage disposal, latrines, food, cooking, water, alcohol, morale, recruit examination, smallpox vaccination, regimental hospitals, and officer supervision, the camp inspection returns are unique snapshots of what it was like to live in a Union army camp. The evidence shows that sanitation varied widely from unit to unit and across time periods. The ability of volunteer regimental officers and surgeons to take sanitary principles seriously often was low. But alcoholic consumption was much lower than we think, while disposing of garbage and human waste often non-existent. Overall the volunteer regiments did well enough to get by, but they did not achieve high marks for military effectiveness when it came to preventive health care.