The Coon Dawg's Mess
Progressive Living Historians
We are a small group or "mess" of living historians based in South Georgia dedicated to the preservation of antebellum history and civil war history. We typically portray the common infantryman or cavalryman on campaign. However, we are as equally interested in portraying civilians.
Fancy the comforts of such a life as this! Roused at dawn to crawl out and stand half-dressed in a drenching storm while the company-roll was being called; then return to damp blankets—or to rub the skin off of your knuckles, trying to start a fire with green pine poles in the storm; go down to the marsh to break the ice off of a shallow branch or rivulet, and flirt a few handfuls of muddy water upon your face, then wipe it off on the clean corner of a dirty pocket handkerchief, borrow a broken piece of comb (having lost your own, and having no money to replace it) and, after raking the bits of trash out of your stubby locks, devote the next hour to trying to boil a dingy tin-cup of so-called coffee; after which, with a chunk of boiled beef, or broiled bacon (red, almost, with rust and skippers) and a piece of cornbread, you are ready to breakfast. But now you have blackened your hands, and are begrimed with the sooty smoke from the snapping, popping, sappy, green pine logs, your eyes are red and smarting, your face burned while your back is drenched and chilled; and you have no place to sit while eating your rough meal.
Around you are dozens of rough, uncouth fellows, whose mingled complaints, coarse jests, quarrels, noise and impatience make you sigh at the prospect of spending the entire day and the next, and the next, and so on ad infinitum under precisely similar circumstances. ~ Confederate Private Randolph A. Shotwell, Eighth Virginia Infantry