Between the Battles

This 1862 painting, 3rd Kentucky Infantry Regiment Recovers after Shiloh, near  Corinth, by Conrad Wise Chapman, depicts Confederate soldiers activities in camp.

This exhibit explores the daily life of the Confederate soldier between the battles and the many artifacts are punctuated with quotes taken directly from period letters and diaries. Comparatively little of a soldier’s time in the army was spent engaged in combat. The majority of a soldier’s career was spent in camp, on garrison duty, or marching from one camp or garrison to another. They occupied their time learning to become soldiers in a strange new regimented lifestyle that was so different from the civilian one they had just left. The average soldier spent more time fighting disease and the monotony of camp life than he did fighting the enemy.

Detail of Chapman painting Battery Marshall from Long Island.  

“Shows boat ready to start out; old building used by troops; sentinels; and dispatch boat. This must be a part of the battery not much exposed to the fire of the enemy; everything seeming to be very quiet.”  Conrad Wise Chapman, 1898