Of Note: The Material Culture of Picket Duty during the Civil War

Of Note is an occasional series in which we share items that have caught our eye.

Many things about being a Civil War soldier did not appeal to Private William M. Phile, Company I, 27^th Regiment Connecticut Infantry. In a letter Phile wrote to his sister on February 11 and 12, 1863, he shared his frustrations with life as an infantryman in the Army of the Potomac. This letter now forms part of the William M. Phile and William O. Webb Correspondence in the Library of Congress Manuscript Division.

Writing from near Falmouth, Virginia, just after the conclusion of Union general Ambrose P. Burnside’s infamous “Mud March” campaign in January 1863, which ultimately accomplished little except Burnside’s removal from command, Phile complained about “this traveling around in the mud just whenever a man with a little gilt on each shoulder is pleased to order you.” Phile resented other aspects of army regimentation as well, such as being ordered when to get up and when to go to bed, and “having your food dealt out to you in just such quantities and no more.” Driving the point home, he was then forced to suspend writing, because he heard the beating of the dinner drum and had to fall in line for chow or risk going without any food at all.

Picking up his pen again, Phile continued with his complaints, specifically about the cost of uniforms. Although provided with clothing for a nine-month period before leaving New Haven, Phile had to spend five dollars more on additional clothing, and still needed “a new pair of pants some stockings, shoes etc. which will raise it considerable more.” After joking that he would have to work a year after leaving the military just to repay his debt to the government for his uniform, Phile highlighted one of the contributing factors to the excessive wear and tear on his clothing: picket duty. “Picket duty is awful hard on clothes,” he explained, “for we have to go wandering through brush and over stones through gullies, and climb rocks in the dark and a man is very fortunate if he dont find a tear in his clothes the next morning.”

For those of us in the twenty-first century who stay on the paved walkways or mowed paths at preserved Civil War battlefields, the material challenges of picket duty may not be obvious. But Phile articulated what was no doubt common knowledge to Civil War soldiers in the field: patrolling defensive lines out in the natural environment, in all types of weather, and often in the dark, created the perfect environment in which to snag fabric on brush or jagged rocks, and tear holes in clothing through extra exertion.

Unfortunately for Private Phile, his tongue-in-cheek prediction of having to work after the war to repay his clothing debt did not come to pass, because he did not survive the war. William Phile died on April 20, 1863, just a few months after writing this letter. He was nineteen years old.

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“wrote to his sister…” The likely recipient of Phile’s letter was his sister Mary H. Phile. The transmission envelope bearing the name of the addressee did not remain with the letter, so it is possible Phile’s letter was written to his sister-in-law Emma Webb Phile.

“the cost of uniforms…” For more information about clothing allotments for infantrymen in the Army of the Potomac see John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee, or the Unwritten Story of Army Life (Boston: George M. Smith & Co., 1887), p. 316.