On the Steamer "Illinois"

John Hartwell

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James Kendall Hosmer (1834-1927) would become a well known educator, historian, and “man of letters.” His original training,however, was as a clergyman, and the beginning of the war found him pastor of a Unitarian congregation in Deerfield, Massachusetts. In the fall of 1862, he enlisted as a private in the 52nd Mass. Regiment, then being raised for nine months’ service. Within a few days, he was appointed corporal. During his service, he kept a journal, which he published in 1864, as The Color Guard: being a corporal’s notes of military service in the Nineteenth Army Corps.

At the beginning of Chapter II, he gives the following entertaining description of the regiment’s embarkation aboard a transport bound for the Gulf. As a corporal, he enjoys the considerable luxury of the non-coms cabin. It's a good example of the literate wit of Hosmer's writing.

The 52nd had been encamped for several days on Long Island, N.Y.

Nov. 29. This is the steamer Illinois, in the stream, about half a mile off the Battery. The ship is preparing to sail. Evening; and by special courtesy, the surgeon being absent, I am invited to sleep in his berth to-night. No slight favor, you folks whose sheets are clean, to have a mattress softer than an oaken-deck plank; and a place to lay one’s head, sweeter than a bundle of old rope, soiled by the muddy feet of a trampling army. I stand up, portfolio in hand, half sitting, half leaning, against the cabin-table, with back toward the dim light. A throng of officers are writing, talking, and hurrying past. Now I am luckier: I have found a stool under a brighter light, and the cleanest and best place I have had to write my journal in since I began it.
Yesterday we marched to Brooklyn; then went off through lanterned vessels at dusk, past the glowing city, until at last the Illinois threw over us the shadow of her black hull and double stacks. We waited an hour in the cold, on the lighter; then another on the open deck, among the gun-carriages of a battery that was going with us. We were suffered at last to crowd into the cabin, all grumblers. Ed could hardly make himself heard, though his lungs are good.
The wrath of the regiment vented itself in every form, the oath, the deprecation, the remonstrance. Tom Barker fairly blued the air about him with vocal brimstone and sulphur, a most accomplished and full-lunged blasphemer. From him, there was every gradation down to a little fellow who remonstrated with a gentle spill of milk and water.
Camp down, soldiers, where you can! This cabin is stripped of furniture and carpet: a mirror and the white paint are the only things to remind one of the old elegance of the packet. I glance at the glass as we crowd in. Which am I among the bearded, blue-coated, hustling men? I hardly know myself, sunburnt and muddied; the "52," on the cap top, showing out in the lantern light. Sergt. Warriner, of Company A, gentlemanly fellow, left guide, whose elbow rubs mine at battalion-drill, offers me a place in a "bunk" he has found empty in one of the staterooms. Bias Dickinson, my wise and jovial file-leader, bunks over me. There is room for another: so I go out to where McGill is wedged into the crowding mass, and extract him as I would a tooth. Gradually the hubbub is quelled. The mass of men, like a river seeking its level, flows into "bunk" and stateroom, cabin and galley. Then the floors are covered, and a few miserable ones hold on to banisters and table-legs, and at last the regiment swears itself into an uncomfortable sleep.
 
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Nov. 30. We woke up the morning after we came aboard, Warriner, Bias, and I. Company D woke up generally on the cabin-floor. Poor Companies H and F woke up down in the hold. What to do for breakfast? Through the hatchway opposite our state room-door, we could see the waiters in the lower cabin setting tables for the commissioned officers. Presently there was a steam of coffee and steaks; then a long row of shoulder-straps, and a clatter of knives and forks; we, meanwhile, breakfastless, and undergoing the torments of Tantalus.
But we cannot make out a very strong case of hardship. Beef, hard-bread, and coffee were soon ready. Bill Hilson, in a marvellous cap of pink and blue, cut up the big joints on a gun-box. The "non-coms," whose chevrons take them past the guard amidships, went out loaded with the tin cups of the men to Hen Hilson, out through cabin-door, through greasy, crowded passage-way, behind the wheel, to the galley, where, over a mammoth, steaming caldron, Hen, through the vapor, pours out coffee by the pailful. Hen looks like a beneficent genius, one of the "Arabian Nights" sort, just being condensed from the smoke and mist of these blessed hot kettles. He drips, and almost simmers, with perspiration, as if he had hardly gone half-way yet from vapor to flesh.
I have been down the brass-plated staircase, into the splendors of the commissioned officers cabin, really nothing great at all; but luxurious as compared with our quarters, already greasy from rations, and stained with tobacco-juice; and sumptuous beyond words, as compared with the unplaned boards and tarry odors of the quarters of the privates. Have I mentioned that now our places are assigned? The "non-coms" -- non commissioned, meaning, not non compos; though evil-minded high privates declare it might well mean that have assigned to them an upper cabin, with staterooms, over the quarters of the officers, in the after-part of the ship. The privates are in front, on the lower decks, and in the hold. I promise, in a day or two, to play Virgil, and conduct you through the dismal circles of this Malebolge. Now I speak of the cabin of the officers. The hatches are open above and below, to the upper deck and into the hold. Down the hatch goes a dirty stream of commissary-stores, gun-carriages, rifled-cannon, and pressed hay, within an inch or two of cut-glass, gilt-mouldings, and mahogany. The third mate, with voice coarse and deep as the grating of tenton packages along the skids, orders this and that, or bays inarticulately in a growl at a shirking sailor.
Five sergeants of our company, and two corporals of us, have a stateroom together, perhaps six feet by eight. Besides us, two officers servants consider that they have a right here. Did anyone say, "Elbow-room"?
 
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