Need Reenactors help (Garrison duty)

[Jake Patterson]

Hi guys,
I am currently conducting researching for a book and need some detail help.

Background:
21st Massachusetts infantry with Burnside.
Book is about a private
Garrisoned between the battles of Roanoke Island and New Bern

Where I need help:
Type of tents?
Camp set up- How many men to a tent?
How was the camp set up?
Mess mates - how is this duty established?
Where were the latrines typically and how were they made?
Where were the weapons during the rain? Obviously not stacked.
What did the men do to pass time?
Where were the NCO's and officers' tent?
Etc.

Any help and pictures would greatly be appreciated.

Jake

 

[M E Wolf]

Well, for one - Garrison is usually an enclosure in its final state, wood, brick or stone in substance, with heavy artillery installed. Fort Myer, Virginia is such.

The 1861 Revised Regulations for the Army of the United States (which can be found on the Internet) covers Garrison duties and responsibilities. The Garrison has its commander. Garrison Orders are issued in addition to General Orders, Special Orders and Circulars.

They would have an area to be responsible for and patrol outside 'the walls' of the garrison.

M. E. Wolf

 

[Bonny Blue Flag]

Very interesting, M.E.

Good luck on your info hunt, Jake.

--BBF

 

[James B White]

One thing that would help would be letting us know what sources you've already looked at. For example, there's a regimental history of the 21st here: http://archive.org/stream/21stregiment00walcrich#page/58/mode/2up/search/newbern
Somewhere around the pages before and after the one linked to, there's some information on the situation, but have you already seen that? It looks like they spent a couple weeks on board ships, but before that, on page 56, they talk about life in camp, swimming in the sound despite the cold and reading letters.

It's good that you've got it narrowed down to a specific time and place, because every encampment is going to be a little different, but the hard part will be deciding how specific you want to be. I'm not all that good on military information, but I suspect there will be some things you can actually find out, like the examples of swimming in their spare time or the mutiny over wearing knapsacks at roll call in the regimental history, and other things you can make a pretty good educated guess, like they probably had A tents ("common" tents), since dog tents weren't issued yet, but other things, like the exact layout of the camp, will be even more of a guess.

If you've already run across that regimental history, let us know what else you've found, so we won't be duplicating your effort. If you haven't, there may be lots of other stuff readily available with some googling. I found that just by searching for "twenty first massachusetts" regimental history. Other things to search for would be letters home or memoirs written by any of the members, or find out what other regiments were camped nearby and look for their regimental histories and letters, since their experience was probably similar or they may mention the 21st. A search for "21st massachusetts" letters civil war shows there may be a couple of published memoirs or letter collections and some sporadic letters, which might be useful, but again, I don't know if you've already done the easy stuff like that.