Summary

Away from the battlefronts, the three million soldiers of the Union and Confederate Armies waged a separate struggle against the tedium of camp life, the devastation of wounds and diseases, and the despair of prolonged and disease, and the despair of prolonged captivity. Sprawling tent cities grew up around the two capitals and in other regions where the opposing armies clustered. Medical areas operated as close to the arena of conflict as safely as possible.