September 9, 1862 Voices

A Union Soldier

"We have bully times out here. We went out yesterday and caught four hogs and skinned them and roasted them over the coals. This morning we fetched in another hog and some ducks and chickens. We live first rate out here….Who would not be a soldier?"

Andrew Tehrune September 9, 1862

Rookie soldier Private Andrew Tehrune of the 13th NJ writing his cousin about foraging. From  "Who Would Not Be A Soldier?" by Scott D. Hartwig. The Antietam Campaign. Ed. Gary Gallagher  Chapel Hill:  The University of North Carolina Press,  1999. page 149.

A Confederate Soldier

"What a set of ragamuffins they looked! It seemed as if every cornfield in Maryland had been robbed of its scarecrows and propped up against the fence….My costume consisted of ragged pair of trousers, a stained, dirty jacket; an old slouch hat, the brim pinned up with a thorn; a begrimed blanket over my shoulder, a grease covered haversack full of apples and corn, a cartridge box full and a musket. I was barefooted and had a stone bruise on each foot...there was no one there who would not have been 'run in' by the police had he appeared on the streets of any populous city, and would have been fined the next day for undue exposure. Yet those grimy, sweaty, lean, ragged men were the flower of Lee's army. Those tattered, starving unkempt fellows were the pride fo their sections."

Harvey Judson Hightower of the 20^th Georgia describes himself.September 9, 1862

A confederate describes himself.  From Burnside's Bridge The Climactic Struggle of the 2nd and 20th Georgia at Antietam Creek by Phillip T. Tucker. Mechanicsburg:  Stackpole, 2000. page 5