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Civil War encampment showed soldiers' boredom battles

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Nick Pouliot of Goffstown, left, holds a sought after bag of candy while Mark Richardson of Somersworth looks on during their Civil War encampment at the N.H. Farm Museum on Saturday. (Lebanon Voice photos)

COPYRIGHT2017© MILTON - Civil War soldiers were among the most literate fighting men the world had ever known and during encampments between battles wrote voluminously to sweethearts, wives and loved ones.

For recreation they played a new and developing sport called baseball, and at the end of the day - if they had some money - they might buy an apple pie from a nearby sutler to give them a little taste of home.

Sutlers were food merchants who paid a license to follow troops in the field. They often jacked up prices on things soldiers craved like pies and other foodstuffs that the army didn't supply them with.

These were just some of the fascinating facts learned from re-enactors during a Civil War encampment at the New Hampshire Farm Museum on Saturday.

Nick Pouliot of Goffstown, playing a corporal in the New Hampshire Fifth Regiment, said even during downtime between campaigns, there was, however, sparse down time.

"The colonel of the New Hampshire regiment prided himself on having the best-trained regiment of the Union and drilled the men constantly," Pouliot said. "Other regiments had it a lot easier."

Pouliot and a nearby private, Mark Richardson of Somersworth, noted that sometimes in the winter they'd go three, four months with no fighting and boredom was rampant among the troops.

"Sometimes they'd get a pass to go into a nearby town for a few hours, or sometime they would sneak off in the middle of the night," Pouliot said.

Besides writing a lot of letters, the troops were also avid newspaper readers.

"Almost every little town had a newspaper," Pouliot said, "and whether they were in the south or north they'd read and see what the other side was saying about the war, get a different perspective."

Pouliot and Richardson also talked of how Union and Confederate soldiers in the field often bartered with each other, the boys in gray trading for coffee, the boys in blue for tobacco.

James Feindell of Hooksett displays the cutting saw used when amputation was called for.

The typical daily ration, they said, was nothing but some hard tack, some salt pork, dried vegetables, coffee and sugar. There was also a daily whiskey ration, but many days they didn't get it.

Another re-enactor, James Feindell of Hooksett, manned the medical tent, offering up what we would call primitive surgical tools and practices that Civil War soldiers suffered with.

For instance, sanitary surgical procedures were practically nonexistent, costing many soldiers limbs from the onset of gangrene.

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