Civil War Time: Temporality and Identity in America, 1861-1865

3. “Like a Wheel in a Watch”: Soldiers, Camp, and Battle Time

3 “LIKE A WHEEL IN A WATCH” Soldiers, Camp, and Battle Time “A soldier in the army is like a wheel, in a watch, a part only of its mechanism. His duty is to obey orders.” confederate soldier douglas john cater Union sergeant Isaac Newton Parker’s June 21, 1863, letter to his wife resonated with anxiety, tension, and a terrible concern. Although not broken, Parker’s watch had not been serviced in seven years. Rather than trust the precious task to unreliable North Carolina watch repairers, Parker implored his wife to take his timepiece to O. E. Silbey’s repair shop in Buffalo, New York. Further, he issued terse but detailed instructions. She was to have the watch cleaned and repaired regardless of the cost. She was to test the repaired watch for accuracy by measuring its time against a clock in Silbey’s shop and was also to wind the timepiece and let it run down to make sure that it ran the “full 48 hours” it was supposed to run without stopping.1 The fact that Parker mailed his watch more than seven hundred miles attests to the importance of having an accurate timepiece. A functioning watch was not a luxury. Like canteens, shoes, rifles, and water, it was essential for Parker’s work as a Union sergeant in the 132nd New York Infantry Regiment as well as for the war effort generally. A reliable watch was equally important to Confederate Samuel Andrew Agnew and the Confederate war effort. Unfortunately for Agnew, he opted to have his watch repaired by a Mississippi watchmaker named McAllister in 57 58 Chapter Three October 1863. Although the “charges were extortionate,” they did not reflect the quality of the work completed, and a mere five days after Agnew got the piece back, it broke once more. Perhaps lacking any other local options, Agnew returned his watch to McAllister, who fixed it again. On January 26, 1864, Agnew retrieved his watch from McAllister, paid the dollar charge, and set off to conduct his day’s work armed with his gloriously ticking timepiece. Its precision lasted only until February 8, when the watch chain broke, and Agnew realized that McAllister’s work “seem[ed] to have no stability.” Reasoning that “what can’t be cured must be endured” and lacking the option of sending his watch away to be fixed, Agnew tried two other local watch repairers, to no avail. On March 14, he again took his “watch by McAllister’s for repair.”2 The importance of a working watch clearly outweighed the frustrations and costs imposed by McAllister’s dubious workmanship. Parker’s and Agnew’s stories suggest watches’ extremely important role in soldiering. Civil War soldiers went to extraordinary lengths to secure reliable timepieces largely because the Confederate and Union military complexes attempted to create an orderly, precise, and modern war machine based on the clock. Soldiers therefore found timepieces indispensable. So great was Civil War soldiers’ demand for timepieces that Massachusetts ’s Waltham Watch Company purposely crafted and marketed a soldier’s watch, the Ellery, that retailed for an exceedingly reasonable thirteen dollars and was so popular that by 1865 the timepiece “accounted for 44.7 percent of unit sales and 30.4 percent of receipts.”3 This market saved the Waltham Watch Company from bankruptcy.4 Soldiers first came to understand clock time’s role, importance, and limits while in camp. In the absence of battle, the clock regulated work and leisure during the Monday–Saturday workweek. For the men of the Fourteenth South Carolina Regiment stationed at Camp Butler in Aiken, South Carolina, a typical 1861 workday started with “the roll at reveille, paradethecompanyat6o’clock,drilluntil7.Breakfastover,makeamorning report of the company: who’s sick, who’s on duty, absent, accounted for and everything else. Next, parade the company, call the roll, and drill from 8 to 10, then drill from 10 to 11 o’clock, rest an hour, then drill from 12 to 1 o’clock, then from 3 to 4 o’clock dress parade half past 5. Tattoo at 9¼ o’clock.” Two Union soldiers, with watch chains. Pocket watches were essential tools in a soldier’s arsenal. (Courtesy of the Library of Congress.) 60 Chapter Three The same year also found Union Private Rufus Robbins’s day scheduled by the clock. Each morning, his Seventh Massachusetts Regiment rose at “half past...