Camp Life

THE FIRST TASTE OF CAMP LIFE

This rare Confederate photograph preserves for us the amusements of the Alabama soldiers in camp near Mobile on a spring day in 1861. To the left we see a youth bending eagerly over the shoulder of the man who holds the much-prized newspaper in his hands. To the right a group of youngsters are reading letters from home, while in the background still others are playing the banjo and the violin to relieve the tedium of this inactive waiting for the glorious battles anticipated in imagination when they enlisted. These men are clad in the rough costume of home life, and can boast none of the bright new uniforms with shining brass buttons that made the Federal camps resplendent. Here and there a cap indicates an officer. Yet even these humble accessories were much better than the same troops could show later on, when the ruddy glow on their faces had given place to the sallowness of disease.

ON PARADE

Here a Confederate photographer has caught the Orleans Cadets, Company A, parading before their encampment at Big Bayou, near Pensacola, Florida, April 21, 1861. This was the first volunteer company mustered into service from the State of Louisiana. The Cadets had enlisted on April 11, 1861. Although their uniforms are not such as to make a brilliant display, it was with pride and confidence for the future that their commander, Captain (afterwards Lieut. Colonel) Charles D. Dreux, watched their maneuvers on this spring day, little dreaming that in less than three months he would fall in battle, the first but one among army officers to offer up his life for the Southern cause. The hopes now beating high in the hearts of both officers and men were all to be realized in deeds of bravery but only at further cost of human life here seen at its flood tide.

Camp Life

THE FIRST TASTE OF CAMP LIFE

ON PARADE

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