Historians have often characterized the Civil War as long periods of drudgery and boredom punctuated by moments of extreme excitement and terror. Soldiers often grew complacent with their life in camp, learning to perform the mundane tasks of drill and physical labor which consumed the majority of their days. In times of battle, soldiers felt immense fear and panic, remedied quickly by terrible excitement and adventure. These two spheres of military life, camp and battle, formed the subject of many letters and diaries from Franklin and Augusta Counties.

Letter writing and diary keeping formed one of the main distractions from the boredom of camp life. Soldier's writings reflected in large part many camp activities, testaments to the ordered life of a soldier, commanded by the bugle and drum. Many writers described fatigue duty-- jobs such as cutting wood, policing deserters, or unloading cargo from wagons. The duties of standing picket and standing guard over prisoners also occupied time in camp.

Peaceful days in camp began with reveille at five or six o'clock in the morning, followed by drilling throughout the morning, and again in the evening. Soldiers often spent free time readying quarters for inspection or enjoying recreational activities. Music, gambling, and other entertainments such as hunting, sharpshooting, or writing filled the majority of a soldier's free time. Late in the evening, the last roll call, or "tattoo", would send the soldiers off to quarters for the night.

Soldiers' wrote about other aspects of camp life as well. These topics often included getting paid, which usually came late, sometimes six months after scheduled payment. While soldiers were not wealthy by any mean, parts of their pay often accompanied letters home. Another occupation in camp was to journal daily happenings, and in particular, the weather. Letters and diaries from Franklin and Augusta are sprinkled throughout with many references to seasonal conditions.

The terror in a soldiers' life came with the expectation and occurrence of battle. Soldiers often reflected upon the haste and excitement of battles in their letters and diaries. Usually a feeling of fear dominated all thoughts, immediately prior to battle, but with the firing of the first shots, excitement took over, and men felt a certain sense of power and freedom as they engaged the enemy at first across the terrain and ultimately in hand to hand combat.

Not all soldiers made battles the main focus of their letters. Those with better educations often assumed their relatives might read the newspapers and obtain battle descriptions from the accounts. Those with less of an education, often included long descriptions about the fight in their letters. Regardless, the men of both Franklin and Augusta were anxious to let family and friends know of their surviving a battle. Many times in the letters immediately following battle, writers asked of friends and family members' whereabouts and safety.

In using writing as a distraction from military life, the soldiers also found a way to escape much of the harsh realties of war. Even if only in the portrayal of mundane events such as pay day or the taking of a prisoner, the men of Franklin and Augusta could relate their lives at the front, with the familiarity of home that they left behind.

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