The Daily Life of a Union Soldier

The nation was split in two over the concept of slavery. The Northern abolitionists felt strongly against slavery while the Southern plantation owners were set on maintaining slave labor. South Carolina paved the way for Southern states to secede from the United States of America. Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas soon followed in early 1861 (Roark, 455). Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina followed in the secession of fellow southern states following the attack on Fort Sumter (Roark, 464). From this point on, the Union and the Confederacy were set in stone. This was the root of the bloody Civil War. Millions of Americans enlisted in the army to support their beliefs and half of the nation. Soldiers faced harsh conditions not only on the battlefield, but also in their camps. The daily life of a Union soldier consisted of hours of drills, minimal food rations, and harsh conditions while fighting to end slavery. The Union soldiers shared many similarities. To enlist as a soldier the boy had to be at least 18 years old. Most were in their late teens and early twenties though boys as young as 15 reportedly enlisted and lied about their age (“Life as a Soldier During the Civil War,” 1). Bell Wiley described the solders as “white, native-born, farmer, protestant, single, and between the age of 18 and 29.” The average soldier was 5’8” tall and weighed 143 pounds (“Civil War Soldiers,” 1). These men came from a variety of places since the North featured an industrial economy. Most of the soldiers were farmers, but hundreds of previous careers were recorded. Some men were accountants, locksmiths, masons, painters, etc. (“Civil War Soldiers,” 1). The youth and variety of occupations of the enlisted featured inexperienced soldiers. According to “Civil War Soldiers,” out of the 2.75 million soldiers that fought in the Civil War, 2 million of them were from the North. Of these 2 million, ¼ were immigrants. 200,000 came from Germany,