Library of Congress

Group of Civil War soldiers playing cards

“You never heard of so much gambling as is carried on here…. [R]affling of any and everything—watches, gold pins, coats, and blankets. You can hear on every side someone saying, ‘Do you want to take a chance for a watch?’ or something else.”

—Confederate soldier R.E. Yerby, in a letter to his mother, December 18, 1861

“Some inveterate players, belonging to the Ninety-third New York, were provided with a table, dice, and a tin cup for a dice-box, and, under charge of a guard, were kept at their favorite amusement all day, playing for beans, with boards slung on their shoulders with the word GAMBLER written on them. They did not seem to enjoy it….”

—War artist Alfred Waud, in a report published in the November 7, 1863, issue of Harper’s Weekly

Library of Congress

A pair of Civil War era playing cards.

“The boys would frequently have a louse race. There was one fellow who was winning all the money; his lice would run quicker and crawl faster than anybody’s lice. We could not understand it…. The lice were placed in plates—this was the race course—and the first that crawled off was the winner. At last we found out D.’s trick; he always heated his plate.”

—Sam Watkins, 1st Tennessee Infantry, on his comrade Fred Dornin’s gambling prowess, in his memoirs

Library of Congress

Civil War era face card playing card.

“Good deal of gambling going on among prisoners. Chuck a luck is the favorite game. You lay your ration of bread down on a figure on a board, and a fellow with a dice-box shakes it up a little, throws out the dice, and your bread is gone…. Rather a one sided affair.”

—Union POW John Ransom, in his diary, January 24, 1864

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“[I]n the evening we sat around our fires and … played cards, frequently for heavy stakes. Our favorite game was ‘poker,’ sometimes called ‘bluff,’ and so fascinating was the game that I once sat for twenty-four hours at the game.”

—Captain Thomas L. Livermore, 18th New Hampshire Infantry, in his memoirs