George Messer’s letter
When we last saw Civil War soldier George Messer in May 1863, the Illinois volunteer was at Camp Hobson (formerly Camp Joe Kelly) near Glasgow, Kentucky. He was grumbling about “dog tents,” two-man canvas shelters no better suited for canines than humans. Man’s best friend also gets a mention in another of Messer’s letters, recently added to the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.
Writing two months earlier to his wife Lottie, Messer had been somewhat more content. Despite the cold temperatures of early spring, he was feeling well, had put on weight, and was hopeful that the war would end soon. He described the dramatic changes made to the local countryside by Union troops seeking to protect their position from surprise attack. “Timber around our camp it is to be cut off clean for five hundred yards all around,” he explained, “and five hundred more to be cut down and left lay.” So thick was the coverage of trees and brush “that when it is cut down you could not shove a dog through it backwards.”
His comrades on picket duty reminded Messer of “cows on a stormy wet day,” when they would “put their backs to the storm and turn up one side of their heads to try and shun as much of it as possible.” Nevertheless, the sentries had some fun with a lieutenant who had returned from town without his military pass, resulting in his brief incarceration in the guard house. Messer noted with satisfaction that such “Shoulder Strap gentlemen” were granted no easier passage than a private when they ventured outside of camp. In his “dog tent” letter, he had also expressed little affection for these epaulette-bedecked officers and their habit of grabbing credit for “great exploits” that were in fact the work of the common soldier.
Click on the links to access finding aids and typescripts of George Messer’s letters. Click here to browse our Civil War collections, or search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.
On May 23, 1863, Illinois volunteer George Messer, nursing a swollen ankle and the first signs of scurvy, penned a letter to his wife from Camp Hobson near Glasgow, Kentucky. Some of his news, he admitted, “may appear somewhat ridiculous but it is nevertheless true.” He and his comrades had been ordered to surrender their tents in exchange for new ones. He then described the wedge-shaped tents that appear in so many images of Civil War encampments. Each soldier carried one half of the tent, a two-pound sheet of canvas about six feet square. When buttoned at the top, supported with poles or saplings, and anchored to the ground, they formed a rudimentary shelter for two men. Judging these accommodations to be more fit for canines than humans, the soldiers quickly dubbed them “dog tents.”
The dog tent (Photo by David Walbert, (c) 2009, CC BY-NC-SA 2.5)
Messer noted sarcastically that when his regimental commander required the men “to appear like Gentlemen on all and every occasion,” yet made them haul and use these “low and unhandy” tents, “it is more than enough to cause the soldier to be pleased and satisfied.” His mates had made sure to communicate their “satisfaction” the next morning while preparing for roll call. “You never heard such barking as the boys made,” he wrote, “they imitated from the Bull dog down to the little Rat terrier and they would frequently break out into a fight in imitations of dogs.” A couple of unpopular promotions had also rankled the men, but Messer admitted that the wisest course was “to quietly submit” to these recent affronts. In such circumstances, however, he found the rumors of a military draft disquieting. Imagine the barking then, he implied: “There is enough of the soldiers dissatisfied now and those that would be drafted into the army would be more so.”
George Messer’s letter is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections. Click here to access a finding aid and typescript. For other Civil War collections, browse here or search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.