The duties incident to picketing and outpost stations are so important that several works by distinguished authors have been written concerning them, but most of the rules are of too technical a character for recital in these papers. The friends of soldiers will, however, take interest in some general statements. The picket line consists of three portionsfirst, the stations of the main guard; second, some distance in advance of these, the picket stations; and third, some two hundred yards in advance of these, the stations of the sentinels. If the country is open and hilly, the latter need not be posted closely together, but in a wooded country they must be quite numerous. It is their duty not to allow any person to pass their line; and if a force of the enemy, too strong to be resisted, approaches, they fall back on the pickets. These should be stationed where they can command the main avenues of approach, and offer resistance to the advanced parties of the enemy. After such resistance becomes useless, the various pickets fall back on the grand guard, which offers a more determined contest. The advance of the enemy should by these means have been delayed for a couple of hours, affording time for the troops to get under arms and take the order of battle.
The following diagram exhibits the general arrangement of picketing:
Let the line A B represent a chain of sentinels on a mile of picket front, C D a line of picket stations, and E the grand guard. The whole force of men may perhaps be three hundred, of whom two thirds will remain at E, posted advantageously upon some eminence protected in part by a stream and commanding an open country. The remaining one hundred will be distributed among the picket stations and thrown forward as sentinels. The whole arrangement is supervised by an officer of rankusually a colonel. With a disposition like the above in front of every division in an army, it is obviously impossible for any considerable force of an enemy to approach without detection.
One of the greatest practical difficulties our armies have experienced has been connected with the system of picketing. The South having been greatly impoverished in those portions traversed by the contending armies, and the people entirely destitute of luxuries, there are innumerable applications from residents outside of the pickets for admission within the lines, in order to trade with officers, for the purpose of procuring in return articles from our well-supplied commissariat. Various other necessities of the people appeal for a modified degree of rigor in regard to picket arrangements, so that our armies are never free from the presence of rebel inhabitants, traversing them in all directions. Perfectly familiar with the country, they are able to detect any weakly guarded places, and undoubtedly, in frequent instances, after receiving the kindest treatment, return to their homes conveying such information to guerillas as enables these prowlers to penetrate through by-roads and seize animals and straggling soldiers. As a precaution against such annoyances, a very judicious arrangement was made last winter by the provost marshal general of the Army of the Potomac. He established certain points on the picket line at which traffic might be conducted, and forbade admission to citizens. Some rigorous system like this is very necessary.
The social life of camps is, however, the topic of chief interest. The question is often asked, Is the life of a soldier demoralizing? The answer must be, 'Yes,' but not for the reasons generally supposed. The opportunities for vice and dissoluteness are really less than at home. The hundred thousand men in an army use less liquor than the same number of men in a city. In fact, liquor is nearly inaccessible to the soldier when on the march. For other kinds of vice the temptations are few. The demoralization arises from the terrible monotony of a prolonged camp, which produces listlessness, indolence, and a devotion to small amusements; deranges and reverses the whole system of active life, as it is seen at home; renders a man uncouth; disqualifies soldiers for anything else than the trade of war. To the officer in his tent and to the soldier in his log hut, while the cold rains are beating without, and the ground is knee deep with mud, there is a constant temptation to find amusement in cards. Gambling thus becomes a pastime too generally adopted. The books sent to the army are not always of the character best adapted to the circumstances. Moral essays and tracts will not be very eagerly sought for by men whose principal object is to kill time. The reading matter needed is the kind afforded by the periodicals of the day, unobjectionable novels, biographies, works of travel, etc.
Camp life has, however, its pleasures, and it must not be supposed that all succumb to its enervating influences, or that any great number yield themselves entirely to its demoralizing effects. The period of military service among our volunteers is too short to permit its full influence to be experienced, and the connections of our soldiers with their homes too intimate to allow them to subside completely into the routine veterans, whose social, mental, and moral nature is altogether lost and absorbed in the new and artificial military nature imposed on them.
War collects many characters of peculiar idiosyncrasies, and jumbles them strangely together, so that curious associations are produced. In any collection of men upon a staff or in a regiment, gathered from different localities, will be found characters of the most opposite and incongruous elements. There will be the youth who has never before travelled beyond his own village, and is full of small anecdotes of the persons who have figured in his little world; and the silent and reserved man of middle age, who, if he can be induced to talk, can tell of many a wild scene in all quarters of the world in which he has been a participant, since he stealthily left his native home, a boy of sixteen. There are men who have passed through all the hardships of life, who have been soldiers in half a dozen European armies, or miners in California and Australia, or sailors; and men who have always had wealth at their disposal, and spent years in foreign travel, viewing the world only under its sunniest aspects. There are many officers grown gray while filling subordinate capacities at posts on the Western prairies and mountains, who can relate many interesting anecdotes of their companionsthe men now prominent in military affairs; and there are officers of high rank, recently emerged from civil life, who nourish prodigiously in self-glorification upon their brief warlike experience. There are brave men, and men whose courage is suspected; quiet men, and men of opinionated perversity; quick-witted men, and men whose profound stupidity makes them continual butts for all kinds of practical jokes; refined, educated, poetical men, and men of boorish habits. In short, any camp presents such specimens of humanity as would be furnished if all the ingredients of character and experience that compose the world had been collected in a huge pepper box and sprinkled miscellaneously throughout the army.
In such associations there are of course many occasions for extracting interesting and comical conversation and incident. Jokes of all kinds are constantly on the wing, and no one can consider himself safe from collision with them. Ridiculous nicknames become attachedno one knows howto the most dignified characters, and altogether usurp the places of the genuine cognomens. No person possesses the art of concealment to such a degree that all his foibles and weaknesses will escape observation in the companionship of a camp; and when discovered, the treatment of them is merciless just in proportion to the care with which they had been hidden. All pretensions will be penetrated, all disguises unmasked. Every man finds himself placed according to his exact status, no matter how well contrived his arrangements for passing himself off for more than his par value. Many an officer, whom the newspapers delight to praise, because he is over courteous to correspondents, and takes precautions to have all his achievements published, has a camp reputation far different from that by which he is known to the public.