When the 57th finally settled into a permanent camp, the men were subjected to stern discipline and scanty rations. Most of the soldiers lacked simple tents, and those who did have them shared their shelters with at least one, sometimes two comrades. Those without tents slept on the ground and used blankets for cover against the el­ements. Officers, on the other hand, enjoyed the comforts of large frame tents. Rations were not especially plentiful, and the men had not been paid for months. Without money, decent food and clothing, many soldiers turned to theft. Stealing, Zimmerman determined, was his only option.

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He slipped away from camp and found a chicken house, but the door was padlocked. Zimmerman moved on to a neighboring farm where he spotted a potato patch. He hid in the woods, waiting for darkness to fall, when “heavy thunder cloud” suddenly sent sheets of rain across the field. The North Carolinian knew “my time” had arrived, and he ran into the garden. “I pitched in and I made tops fly,” he wrote. “I got as many as I wanted[.] [Some were] as big as my fist.” He felt some remorse for stealing, since this was the first thing that he had taken since his enlistment, but said, “I am out of money and if I get anything I will have to steel or beg.”

Hunger forced countless other soldiers to become their own “commissaries,” and the military authorities responded by imposing stricter discipline. By the middle of August, guards surrounded the 57th, demanding a pass from any private who tried to venture from camp. A soldier caught without proper paperwork would be arrested and punished. Guards were also posted at the neighboring farms to protect private property from thievery.

The restrictive measures instituted after Gettysburg must have seemed particularly harsh, but they were essential to protect the countryside from hungry soldiers. Some members of the rank and file, however, saw a hidden agenda to protect officer privileges. Civilians who gave generously to officers received special guards to defend their farms from foragers. “If we get a pass to go out,” Zimmerman wrote, “every house in five miles is garded to keep us away so the officers can get their supply of good things and we must do without [while living] on half rashens and it [is] the meanest kind. Your husband suffers as I am doing now for the want of such things while the officers feast upon such things,” Zimmerman concluded. “They live here better than ever I did at home—ham, chicken fryed, eggs, butter, milk, green snaps, corn, potatoes, and anything you can name they have it and the very best, and we poor privates cant get out of camp without a pass.”

Financial impoverishment was another problem for 57th North Carolina, as the regiment had not been paid for three months. In one company, a soldier reported that the enlisted men could not pool together more than 10 dollars. The lack of funds had some obvious consequences. Private soldiers were used to purchasing food from farmers and sutlers, but inflation and speculation has so diluted their currency that they were essentially penniless. “Dear I will give prises of some things,” William Wagner wrote on August 21, “Irish potaters sells from one to two Dollars a gallen and Milk 50 cents a quart Butter 3 Dollars a pound [and] litle greene aples a 50 cents a dozen [and] Eggs 3 Dollars a dozen.” Infuriated soldiers denounced the government for abandoning them. Federal currency was exceedingly more valuable than Confederate money, exasperating Wagner, who wrote: “what gits me so hard [is] why in Richmond they give from 7 to 10 Dollars Confederate money for one Dollars of yankee money.” It made no sense to struggling Confederates to be fighting for a nation where some people profited off enemy currency when their own meager army diet forced them to spend what little money they had on “a litle some thing” to eat.

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