Why Did Civil War Soldiers Fear Camp More Than Battle?

No enemy in sight, and yet the camp was where most Civil War soldiers died. Why did a quiet field of tents kill twice as many men as the battlefield? In this documentary we follow an imagined but typical nineteen-year-old farm boy of the 6th Vermont at Camp Griffin, Virginia, in the first winter of the war (1861–62), and walk through camp sickness one disease at a time: measles among country recruits (and Robert E. Lee's letter that "the soldiers everywhere are sick"), the crowded Sibley tent, typhoid and the water, the dysentery soldiers nicknamed the "Virginia quickstep", malaria and the whiskey-and-quinine ration, sick call through John Billings' eyes, the soldiers who vaccinated themselves against smallpox, calomel and Surgeon General William Hammond's ban, Louisa May Alcott's weeks as an army nurse, and the giant pavilion hospitals of Chimborazo and Satterlee. Then we look at who the camp hit hardest, and at the one ordinary thing that decided who survived. What do we know, and what is still debated? The figures come mainly from Union records (the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion and later counts) and vary between sources; Confederate records are far less complete. "Two of every three deaths were from disease" is the standard estimate. The rural-recruit explanation for measles is the conventional view, but some researchers argue it is overstated. The quinine-smuggling dolls in Richmond have hollow heads, but their story rests on family accounts. The figure of about 5,000 Confederate soldiers unfit for duty after bad self-vaccinations around Chancellorsville (spring 1863) is a historian's estimate. Soldiers' slang terms are given as commonly reported. Built from soldiers' own memoirs and letters (John D. Billings, Sam Watkins, Robert E. Lee, Louisa May Alcott, Phoebe Yates Pember) and the work of historians of Civil War medicine. CHAPTERS 0:00 December at Camp Griffin 0:55 Twice as Deadly as Battle 1:44 The Thing That Decided Who Lived 2:31 How a Quiet Camp Turns Deadly 3:33 The Men Who Disappeared 4:26 Measles and the Farm Boys 4:35 "The Soldiers Everywhere Are Sick" 6:41 Black Measles in Kentucky 7:15 Twelve Men, One Tent Pole 8:38 Bad Air and a Blind Spot 9:16 The Fever in the Water 11:12 A Twist Involving Coffee 11:33 The Virginia Quickstep 12:22 Corinth, One Vast Hospital 13:39 The Shakes and the Mosquitoes 14:43 Whiskey and Quinine 15:25 The Doll With a Hollow Head 16:36 Sick Call 16:53 The Faker in the Overcoat 18:49 Smallpox and a Friend's Scab 19:34 Five Thousand Sore Arms 20:50 A Pill Made of Mercury 21:15 Louisa May Alcott, Army Nurse 22:15 The Surgeon General Who Banned It 23:15 The Long Ride to the Hospital 23:57 Chimborazo, a Town of Wards 24:53 The Matron Who Kept the Key 25:35 The Men the Camp Hit Hardest 27:31 The Whole Camp 28:03 Closing the Loops 29:32 Back to Camp Griffin SOURCES AND FURTHER READING John D. Billings, Hardtack and Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life (1887), chapter "A Day in Camp" (sick call) Sam R. Watkins, Co. Aytch (1882), on Corinth in 1862 Robert E. Lee, letter of August 4, 1861, in Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee (1904) Louisa May Alcott, Hospital Sketches (1863) Phoebe Yates Pember, A Southern Woman's Story (1879) The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870–1888) Margaret Humphreys, Intensely Human: The Health of the Black Soldier in the American Civil War (2008) National Park Service, Civil War Series: health of the United States Colored Troops 6th Vermont Infantry records, Camp Griffin, winter 1861–62 American Civil War Museum, Richmond: the "Nina" and "Lucy Ann" dolls Science History Institute (Distillations): quinine and the Civil War Smithsonian Magazine and Robert Hicks: Confederate self-vaccination Illustrations are artistic reconstructions. #CivilWar #CivilWarHistory #AmericanHistory