Planning a camping trip

[Jill Mitchell]

As a starting point for my planning, I'm trying to determine what items Booth and Herold would have would have had with them while they were in the pine thicket. This would give me a nice list of things I can take with me to use during my "camping trip". My biggest struggle is knowing what type of things would have been on the horses.

Here's what I have off the top of my head. Can you all think of other items the boys would have had, either on themselves or on their horses?


One thing almost certainly the horses would NOT have had is saddlebags. Recently I finished reading Border and Bastille, an account written in 1863 by English author George Alfred Lawrence, who enlists aid to (clandestinely) enter the Confederacy from a home base he makes in Baltimore. He will try three routes to cross into "Secessia" through: (1) Leonardtown, MD; (2) Shepherdstown, WV and (3) New Creek, WV. All three attempts fail. The first route of choice is the Southern Maryland route to Leonardtown. He is advised not to attempt a crossing on horseback, but Lawrence insists, and because he insists also on carrying saddlebags and other suspect accoutrements, his guide in turn insists on abandoning this route. Lawrence finally relents. Of this route Lawrence notes: "On the land route, before reaching the point of embarkation, lay the chief difficulties. A horseman traveling with saddle-bags, became at once a suspicious personage, liable everywhere to jealous scrutiny."

One point that is striking in reading Lawrence's account is the scarcity of suitable horses capable of covering long distances--something that gets worse as the war progresses during to an outbreak of a contagious disease that if it did not outright cause the quick death of a horse, left many unsuitable to be ridden. The area at the time was often infiltrated by Confederate cavalryman on "remount furlough" trying to obtain suitable horseflesh--through either purchase or appropriation. Two riders on horseback would have been tempting targets--thus the necessity of keeping weight to a minimum.