Soldier life was a hard and fatal job.

If you didnt die in battle, you could very easily die from disease or starvation. As a soldier the living situations were far from ideal, and travel made you home sick and you grew more exhausted every day. At the start of war, to be a soldier you had to be a white male between the ages of 18-40, but women and younger men snuck their way into the army. Before you could go out in the army, you had to go through a long period of time, where each day you would run drill after drill after drill. Drilling consisted of marching while learning the military commands and weapon maneuvers, and repeating them over and over again. The Union had 4 million soldiers. The uniforms for the soldiers were dark blue and went to their mid-thigh. Their uniforms were made of wool and they had a belt that held some of their supplies. Buttons on the uniform identified the rank of the soldier. The Confederate had 1.1 million enlisted soldiers. Their uniforms were grey, hanging to the mid-thigh. They were made from cotton, wool, and a type of jean like cloth. Like the Union, their buttons identified their rank, too. In the war, both sides used wooden sailing ships and ironclads. They also tried to experiment with submarines during the war. Soldiers usually carried smoothbore muskets, or repeating rifles. Some major artillery varied from solidshot cannonballs to exploding canisters. With all of this, the Civil War resulted in advances in technology. The use of technology and the method of fighting explained why the Civil War was called the modern war. The north held a great advantage with railroads, because there was more railroads tracks in the north than in the south. So, mobile artillery and heavy weapons were transported on railroads in the north. Soldiers traveling on foot slept in a Sibley or a pup tent. A Sibley is like a teepee that is 12 feet high and 18 feet long. A pup tent got its name because it is so small like a dog house. It is only 6 feet long and 4 feet wide. A pup tent was the most common ten used in the army. It could be divided in half, where then, two people would carry a half, and at night would connect them together. Then both of them would squeeze into it to sleep. Sometime when the weather was fare, they wouldnt even use tents. They would just sleep on the ground with the very little blanketing that they had. Coffee was a prized possession in the war, but was soon taken away in the south. For the north, they usually ate rock hard soda crackers, which was a three inch square and was half an inch thick. The south would make crush, which is a

combination of crumbled cornbread, water, and raw beef, which was all stewed in a tub of bacon grease. Filth and hunger were commonly what caused diseases. Typhoid was the worst disease that killed 17,000 people. Smallpox came during the middle of the war and killed about 1,020 people. The federal army created an entire corps just for the sick and wounded. A soldiers life is hard. It is something that many people would never want to do.