- Typical Day - A typical day for a soldier involved waking up and doing daily drills, orders, tasks, delivering messages, etc. After that soldiers spent their days cleaning weapons, Scavenging areas for food and supplies, and cooking meals. Life for soldiers could be very boring. Soldiers sometimes stayed stationed in one position for months at a time before partaking in a battle.
- Food - A meal for a Union soldier was distributed in rations and normally consisted of beef or pork, hardtack ( a type of hard bread) and other food items such as peas, rice, beans, dried fruit, potatoes, molasses, vinegar, and salt. While Union soldiers ate well almost every day Confederate soldiers ate worse and a lot less food. Confederate soldiers ate bacon, cornmeal, molasses, peas, vegetables, and rice.
Hardtack
Union Uniforms - Union Uniforms usually consisted of a blue outer coat and blue pants. Union soldiers were also given a matching hat to go along with their uniforms. Soldiers wore whatever shoes they could get their hands on. As the wore continued on uniforms became in short supply and some soldiers had to take their uniforms off of dead soldiers.
Confederate Uniforms - Confederate Uniforms were very similar to those worn by Union soldiers with one significant difference; they were grey. Confederate soldiers had the same problem that Union soldiers had with uniforms as the war dragged on for several years and eventually Confederate soldiers were wearing whatever they could find.
